I am a solicitor in the Asbestos Disease Litigation Team in Irwin Mitchell’s Birmingham Office.  My blog follows two mesothelioma suffers ‘William’ and ‘John’ through the compensation process to show how claims work and to highlight some issues which commonly arise.

One of the key pieces of evidence in any personal injury claim is the medical report.  As you know from my previous blog, I had already obtained John and William’s medical notes at the very start of the case.  I instructed a doctor who specialises in treating mesothelioma patients to prepare reports for John and for William.

Medical experts do not usually need to see my clients in person before preparing the report.  This was particularly good news for John who was feeling poorly after his chemotherapy and I did not want to ask him to travel.  In fact the doctor only needed to speak to William briefly over the telephone and did not need to bother John at all.

The doctors we use as experts have to be independent and give their opinion to the Court rather than to us to ensure they are fair and impartial.  The expert has to give his opinion on the ‘balance of probabilities’, so in his report he must tell the Court what he believes is more likely than not to be the case.  In a compensation claim of this type we do not have to prove their diagnosis beyond ‘reasonable doubt’. 

The first point that the medical report must deal with is the diagnosis of my clients’ illnesses.  Mesothelioma is often hard to diagnose in life and it is sometimes mistaken for a lung cancer and vice versa.  In both John’s & William’s cases the expert Doctor confirmed that, in his opinion, both John & William had mesothelioma rather than lung cancer.  The Doctor also confirmed he believed that their illnesses had been caused by their exposure to asbestos at work.  Although this news came as no surprise to John or William, it did mean that the medical evidence was supportive for the claim.