Hudgell Solicitors

Clinical Negligence

Hayley is a Senior Solicitor specialising in medical negligence cases and has many years of experience dealing with complicated and high value claims. 

Hayley has a particular interest in birth injury, neonatal and stillbirth cases and has led campaigns to provide improved support for families who suffer baby loss. 

Hayley joined the firm in 2009 and has developed a specialist interest representing children who have suffered a severe brain injury during pregnancy, childbirth or shortly afterwards, cases which have been funded via Legal Aid.   

As an associate solicitor Hayley also has a keen interest in medical negligence fatal accidents, surgical errors and cancer misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis as well as strokes. 

Based in our Hull office, and having risen through the firm, Hayley is now responsible for a team of clinical negligence fee earners and mentors our trainee solicitors.

Career Highlights

Recently, I represented a mother who sadly suffered PTSD as a result of her mismanaged birth. This also caused her child’s Ischaemic Encephalopathy, where the baby’s brain does not receive enough oxygen and blood flow. Liability has now been admitted and the child’s claim is ongoing due to a guarded prognosis.  

I have also successfully secured an admission of liability from a hospital trust in a case where a 42-year-old patient died after medical staff failed to check the results of an urgent MRI scan for three days, completely missing a brain abscess from which he died.  

As a result, recommendations were made to improve care at the hospital, including the introduction of a ‘fail-safe system’ in which urgent findings are communicated to the relevant medical teams. 

I have also successfully led a case for breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights for the family of a patient who took their life after being wrongly denied admission to a psychiatric unit.

Law LLB (Hons) degree Legal Practice Course