UPDATE: Former Spurs starlet sues club for £7m after heart attack ends his career

[balalasaurus]

Former teenage Spurs player seeking damages for life destroying cardiac arrest suffered on pitch.

Read the full article at The Telegraph

UPDATE: OFFICIAL SITE 3 February 2015 - 19:00

We can report that following discussions at court today, two of our former medical staff have accepted that they are solely responsible for their actions in 2005 in respect of allegations originally made against the Club.

 

[HappySpur]

Such a sad story.

 

[yido_number1]

I remember hearing about this a while ago it is truly sad. I'm not sure how this one will play out as it seems just a tragic accident. For us to be found negligent I guess they would have to prove we were below par compared to other football clubs of similar standings.

Sad for the lad and I thought we were actually helping them out?

 

[Gaz_Gammon]

"The consultant recognised that his ECG trace was 'abnormal', said the QC"





Guilty m'lud.....

 

[CosmicHotspur]

If the consultant failed to determine the exact cause and seriousness of the abnormality, surely he has to be culpable. If he had, he would have made it known that it would be dangerous for the lad to follow a career in football.

Misinformation or lack of it seem to be at the root of this. I'm sure Spurs wouldn't have offered him a professional contract if they had known how serious his condition was.

 

[Gaz_Gammon]

If the consultant failed to determine the exact cause and seriousness of the abnormality, surely he has to be culpable. If he had, he would have made it known that it would be dangerous for the lad to follow a career in football.

Misinformation or lack of it seem to be at the root of this. I'm sure Spurs wouldn't have offered him a professional contract if they had known how serious his condition was.

Further tests should have been completed before the poor lad got within a mile of the changing room. What effect wating a few weeks for a more in depth medical opinion from a cardiologist does not bear thinking about.

 

[newbie]

this is a really old story, but then court case drag on, it is a really really sad story.

 

[slartibartfast]

My God thats an awful tragedy.
I can't remember hearing about this at the time.
I take it we now have more stringent procedures in place to ensure this doesn't happen again.
Suppose there's probably regulations for it by now. If not there should be.
From the outside I think we look guilty. Should pay up anyway and look after our own.
Imagine being his parents, christ.
I don't think Id be able to carry on if that happened to one of my kids.

 

[Main Man]

I can't believe this is the first I have heard about this.

I am not sure what our current standing in the Premier League has to do with it though. What a strange argument.

 

[225]

Bit weird really. He must have trained for years and then it happened so soon in his first youth game a year later?

I would have thought insurances covered this kind of thing, but maybe not.

 

[slartibartfast]

As an employer we have a duty of care for all employees to ensure a safe working environment as far is practicable under HASAWA.
It doesn't look like we have if we were told he has a condition but carried on anyway.
May be more to this though.
I hope his family have enough money to make life comfortable, as much as it can be anyway.

 

[225]

I can't believe this is the first I have heard about this.

I am not sure what our current standing in the Premier League has to do with it though. What a strange argument.

Agree - it's like the QC was trying to say that it doesn't matter about the evidence, the club can afford it anyway. Doesn't really help add conviction to the case, imo.

 

[newbie]

My God thats an awful tragedy.
I can't remember hearing about this at the time.
I take it we now have more stringent procedures in place to ensure this doesn't happen again.
Suppose there's probably regulations for it by now. If not there should be.
From the outside I think we look guilty. Should pay up anyway and look after our own.
Imagine being his parents, christ.
I don't think Id be able to carry on if that happened to one of my kids.

I would have thought that spurs Insurance would have covered this, so surely its a case really against the insurance companys? My Mates dad has a court case a drunken bus driver hit him (in the 80s) when he was on the curb and its had really affected him it took 10 years before it went to court and they in the end settled for peanuts. So I don't know how something like this would compare in court as one hand the poor lad is very much a worse state, but where Spurs actually negligent? will it be covered by insurance? and how the hell do you determine what the affect on his life Is worth?

 

[newbie]

As an employer we have a duty of care for all employees to ensure a safe working environment as far is practicable under HASAWA.
It doesn't look like we have if we were told he has a condition but carried on anyway.
May be more to this though.
I hope his family have enough money to make life comfortable, as much as it can be anyway.

This is tricky as I know people who have had abnormally low heart rates and the doctors not really been very fussed. You also have to take in to account that this is the prosecutions version not Spurs or the Doctors. Lets be honest if it can happen to Fabrice and other pro footballers who have had medicals when they join clubs I am sure its easy to slip the net.

 

[TottenhamMattSpur]

I get to see cases like this occasionally due to working in the insurance industry.
I'd love to get my teeth into this one. The story is very light on detail. They fail to mention its unlikely spurs will be responsible, it'll be their insurers. They even go as far as to quote their lawyer as saying spurs have eye watering resources, well, that means nothing in terms of the money available to the unfortunate young man who suffered the illness. I don't Tottenham would be under insured. They'd give their account of the incident and circumstances to their insurers appointed lawyer then it's over to them.
Same for the cardiologist.

Most of my experience is Canada and the US. In those countries claims are generally time barred after 1-2 years. I'm not as familiar with UK law, but I can't see that a claim could be brought after 9 years. It would have to have been filed a reasonable amount of time after the incident.
I'd love to see how this plays out.

 

[yankspurs]

I get to see cases like this occasionally due to working in the insurance industry.
I'd love to get my teeth into this one. The story is very light on detail. They fail to mention its unlikely spurs will be responsible, it'll be their insurers. They even go as far as to quote their lawyer as saying spurs have eye watering resources, well, that means nothing in terms of the money available to the unfortunate young man who suffered the illness. I don't Tottenham would be under insured. They'd give their account of the incident and circumstances to their insurers appointed lawyer then it's over to them.
Same for the cardiologist.

Most of my experience is Canada and the US. In those countries claims are generally time barred after 1-2 years. I'm not as familiar with UK law, but I can't see that a claim could be brought after 9 years. It would have to have been filed a reasonable amount of time after the incident.
I'd love to see how this plays out.

Exactly. Seems weird that a case would be brought up 10 years later. Does the UK not have a statute of limitations like there is here in the states? Feel bad for the kid. Think all clubs should have protocol in place for situtations like this.

 

[paxton_soul]

Facts are a huge number of us are walking around with heart defects that would be picked up as unusual by an ecg. But they will never cause us a problem in life. It is a question of balancing risks. Do we tell huge numbers of young people they can't do any physical exercise or hope for a professional sports career so that perhaps one or two are spared a heart attack? And would the health consequences of that be worse for more people than the one saved? I would be amazed if spurs didn't insurance didnt cover a hefty pay out for this poor lad.

 

[talkshowhost86]

That article only contains one side's view so we can't take it as gospel, but if the doc recommended regular checks and we didn't give them then that doesn't look great.

It's a big leap from there to medical negligence and employer's liability though.

 

[davidmatzdorf]

Mr Featherby is speaking that distinctive language known as Barrister-Bullshit. it undermines even the bits of truth that may be buried in his oration and makes them sound like manipulative exaggeration. I can't bear listening to it and, when watching legal dramas on television or doing jury service myself, find it hard to believe that so many people are successfully conned by it.

The other side will do the same.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a bit harder to diagnose than Mr Featherby would have us think. Some years ago, I shared a hospital room with a young man who had it. Not a good prognosis, even if you don't overdo it and have a heart attack. Whether either the doctor or the club was negligent is going to hinge on small details and technicalities (or they would have admitted liability on insurers' advice) and drawing conclusions about what they should have done, as several people have done above, based on one barrister's heavily-biased opening speech, is a bit unworthy and unwise, if unsurprising.

As for insurance, THFC's employer's liability insurance will cover this, but only if negligence is proven. No negligence, no settlement, no insurance payment.

I think that, in the UK, the time frame for filing a case like this would run from the point where it might reasonably have been discovered that negligence could have occurred - such as getting access to records - and not from the incident itself. If a legal expert says otherwise, then I'm wrong.

I know someone in America who successfully sued Yamaha for a disabling motorcycle accident 12 years after the fact. His original lawyer had [negligently] failed to pursue an important piece of evidence,which was only discovered when the lawyer retired and the person who took over the practice did his due diligence and then approached the injured person to revive the case, to avoid inheriting the potential liability. It was settled for a 6 figure sum, so it plainly wasn't time-barred, or Yamaha wouldn't have settled.

 

[mawspurs]

A sad story indeed. I'd be surprised if the club were found culpable though.

It sounds like there was a breakdown in communications because I'm sure if regular checks were recommended to the club by the doctor then they would have been carried out. What would the club gain by not doing them?