Hudgell Solicitors

Clinical Negligence

Joint National Head of Clinical Negligence.

Vince is joint head of the clinical negligence practice and has been supporting clients with their compensation claims since 1998.

He has worked at Hudgell Solicitors since 2011 as team manager and has a focus on hospital negligence, surgical errors and dental negligence and successfully handles many sensitive and complex high-value claims.

Vince is regularly called upon by clients who find themselves in challenging circumstances and who seek dedicated rehabilitation programmes which will improve their daily lives after suffering often life-changing injuries and disabilities as a result of medical error. He has been involved in cases involving lower limb amputations and spinal injuries, leading to multi-million pound settlements

Career Highlights

I secured £650,000 damages for a client who suffered irreversible spinal injuries following the failure of a Hospital Trust to appropriately investigate his worsening back pain. When finally x-rayed and sent for an MRI scan a misunderstanding at the hospital resulted in him being discharged home without the MRI being checked. Eventually my client was diagnosed as having cauda equine syndrome and underwent emergency surgery. Sadly this did not restore his bowel and bladder function, nor foot drop that had also developed.

In another case I secured a £300,000 damages settlement for a client who’d had an initially been offered £30,000 to settle his case. This was after he developed a serious skin infection after an elective below knee amputation to address long standing pain, causing him to then need a high above knee amputation. The use of prophylactic antibiotics after the original surgery would have prevented the infection developing. This was of course a hugely distressing and life-affecting error.

In another case, which was denied by the hospital trust, I secured damages of £87,500 after an initial offer of just £20,000 was made. The case involved our client not being assessed properly when experiencing swelling of the salivary glands and delayed diagnosis, leading to it reoccurring after removal of the gland. This could have been avoided, and due to radiotherapy being administered to her neck she was left at risk of developing problems to her neck bones.

PGDip Legal Practice, Solicitor BA (Hons) Law & Business