Rees v Darlington Memorial Hospital NHS Trust [2003] UKHL 52

A visually disabled woman had a healthy child following a negligent sterilisation. The House of Lords denied her claim for the costs of raising the child, but established a conventional award of £15,000 to recognise the legal wrong and loss of autonomy.

Facts

The claimant, Ms Rees, suffered from a severe and progressive visual disability. Due to her condition, she was concerned about her ability to care for a child and therefore sought sterilisation. The procedure was performed negligently by the Darlington Memorial Hospital NHS Trust. Subsequently, she conceived and gave birth to a healthy son, Christopher. Ms Rees brought a claim against the Trust for the tort of negligence, seeking damages to cover the costs of bringing up the child. The trial judge found in her favour, but the Court of Appeal, following the precedent set in McFarlane v Tayside Health Board, overturned this decision and held that she was not entitled to recover the costs of the child’s upbringing.

Issues

The central legal issue before the House of Lords was whether the costs of bringing up a healthy child, born as a result of a negligent sterilisation procedure, were recoverable as damages. This required the court to consider whether the precedent in McFarlane, which denied such claims, should be followed, modified, or overruled. A key subsidiary issue was whether the claimant’s significant disability provided a legal basis for distinguishing her case from the facts of McFarlane, where the parents were not disabled.

Judgment

The House of Lords, by a majority of 3-2, allowed the appeal in part. While they upheld the core principle from McFarlane that the costs of raising a healthy child are not recoverable, they established a ‘conventional award’ to compensate the claimant for the legal wrong she had suffered.

The Majority Opinion

Lords Bingham, Nicholls, and Steyn affirmed that public policy and legal principle prevented the recovery of child-rearing costs. They reasoned that the benefits of a healthy child are incalculable and that it would be morally unacceptable for the law to treat the birth of a healthy child as a net financial loss. Lord Bingham of Cornhill stated:

To permit a claim for the cost of bringing up a child would be to regard a child as a financial liability, which is offensive to ordinary notions of the value of human life. It would be to treat the birth of a child as a detriment, a debit, when in the eyes of most people, and in the eyes of the law as I believe it to be, it is a benefit, a credit.

However, the majority recognised that simply dismissing the claim failed to provide an adequate remedy for the negligence. The negligence had denied Ms Rees her personal autonomy—the ability to plan her life as she wished. To acknowledge this wrong, they introduced a conventional, standardised award. Lord Steyn explained the rationale:

It is a legal wrong for which the law of tort must provide a fair and reasonable remedy. The doctor’s negligence has deprived the mother of the opportunity to live her life in the way that she wished and planned. And it has imposed on her the burdens of pregnancy and labour and the responsibilities of caring for the child until majority. In my view an award to acknowledge the wrong must be a conventional award.

Lord Bingham proposed, and the majority agreed, that this conventional award should be set at £15,000.

The Dissenting Opinion

Lords Hope and Millett dissented. They argued that the claim for the financial costs of the child’s upbringing should be allowed. Lord Millett distinguished the case from McFarlane on the basis of the claimant’s specific reason for seeking sterilisation—her disability. He argued that it was not ‘fair, just and reasonable’ to deny her claim for the very financial consequences she had sought to avoid through the sterilisation procedure.

Implications

The decision in Rees is of major significance in the law of tort. It reaffirmed the core principle of McFarlane that the costs of raising a healthy child born from a ‘wrongful conception’ are irrecoverable. However, it created a new head of damage: a ‘conventional award’ of £15,000 for the loss of a parent’s autonomy and to recognise the legal wrong of the negligence itself. This award is available in all such cases, regardless of the parent’s financial means or whether the child is born with a disability. The judgment represents a judicial attempt to balance legal principle with the need to provide a just remedy, acknowledging that while a child is a ‘blessing’, the negligence that leads to an unwanted birth is a genuine legal injury deserving of compensation.

Verdict: Appeal allowed in part. The claimant’s claim for the costs of upbringing was denied, but a conventional award of £15,000 for the denial of autonomy was substituted for the Court of Appeal’s nil award.

Source: Rees v Darlington Memorial Hospital NHS Trust [2003] UKHL 52