The surgeon had brought an unsuccessful clinical negligence claim
UK deputy High Court judge David Pittaway has laid a costs penalty on the East & North Hertfordshire NHS Trust after the trust accused surgeon Mohamed Hakmi of fundamental dishonesty, reported the Law Society Gazette.
Per the Gazette, this marks an unusual instance wherein such a penalty was imposed on defendants making unsubstantiated fundamental dishonesty claims.
In Hakmi v East & North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, the defendants alleged that Hakmi was over-exaggerating a stroke’s impairment effects. The surgeon had filed a clinical negligence claim where he said he suffered serious disability after the hospital would not offer thrombolysis treatment.
Pittaway determined that the treatment would not have changed what happened to Hakmi. However, the judge ruled that the trust should shoulder 15 percent of Hakmi’s expenses from the time the fundamental dishonesty allegation was made.
“I do not accept that to make such an order, where a claimant fails, undermines the costs regime. If anything it is the converse, not to make such an order would give a defendant a free tilt at raising the issue of fundamental dishonesty,” Pittaway said in a statement published by the Gazette.
The fundamental dishonesty defense was introduced a decade ago, and claimant lobby groups have indicated that defendants pled it without consequences and upped the pressure on clients to agree to settlements, according to the Gazette. The allegation subjected Hakmi to negative press attention on the trial’s first day.
Hakmi was also accused of self-sabotaging a cognitive test to get a low score, which he said affected him emotionally for months. Pittaway determined that Hakmi’s low cognitive test score was not obtained deliberately as it would contradict Hakmi’s efforts to rehabilitate himself as well as testimonies from four colleagues vouching for Hakmi’s honesty and integrity. Thus, the judge shot down the fundamental dishonesty claim.
Pittaway noted that case evidence had been thoroughly evaluated at the trial and considered inadequate; thus, the trust had an opportunity to withdraw the fundamental dishonesty allegation.
