Law Weblog

AB v Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust [2004]

[Negligence – duty of care medical practitioner removing and retaining organs from child’s body owed a duty of care to the parents]
D the hospitals that had retained tissue from the bodies of deceased children taken at or after post-mortem without the knowledge or consent of the parents The claimants were three lead claimants in group litigation. In each case, they consented to the carrying out of a post mortem, but were not informed in detail of the procedure or that organs might be removed and retained. Where organs had been retained, they were often treated in some way so as to preserve them.

Held: In the case of a doctor treating a mother who had had a child which had died, the doctor would have a duty to advise the mother about future pregnancies. That duty extended to giving the parents an explanation of the purpose of the post mortem and what it involved, including alerting them to the fact that organs might be retained.