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We have published our Ombudsman decisions here. These stories will give you a sense of what happens when a formal decision is needed to resolve a complaint. This collection of decisions will grow over time.
If you want to know more about the types of complaints we see, read more on our statistics page. Or if you want to know more about how we resolve complaints informally, click here to read our stories that show how we've been able to help people with different kinds of problems and complaints.
Expert witness reports overlooked
Area of law: Negligence – medicalComplaint reason(s): Failure to keep the complainant informed; failure to follow instructions
Remedy: Additional work to put right (and pay) for service deficiencies
Outcome: Ombudsman's decision accepted by the complainant
Mrs B's plastic surgery didn't work out quite as well as everyone in the family had hoped. Something had clearly gone wrong. She was very upset, to say the least, and her husband was furious. So he mounted a medical negligence claim against the surgeon involved, on her behalf. This was going to be a complicated business at the best of times – serving a claim form and all the associated paperwork, assembling photographic evidence, commissioning and compiling reports from independent medical experts, and so on.
Mr B decided to use a large firm of solicitors to do most of the work for his wife, with him fronting the claim for her. An application was made to the Community Legal Service, which at the time was providing advice and legal representation for people involved in civil cases.
When the solicitor running the claim left the firm without warning, her replacement noticed that two key expert witness statements were missing. Not a disaster, exactly, because their evidence could be edited back into the report supporting the claim. But it was an oversight and a setback, and the firm put their hands up to it.
Mr B complained that the firm failed to keep him informed about his solicitor's planned departure, failed to follow his instructions and didn't submit relevant reports from expert witnesses. He wanted them to cover the full cost of a new expert witness report and to pay compensation for the stress and inconvenience he and his family had experienced.
The Ombudsman concluded that the service provided by the firm overall was of a reasonable standard and that they had not let Mr B's family down in general. But they had clearly fallen short in failing to get all the independent expert evidence sorted out. This had caused some delay, although it hadn't in the end affected the substance of the claim.
The firm was ordered to pay £500 towards the costs of a new plastic surgeon report and to do the extra work needed - free of charge - to make sure this evidence was properly incorporated into the claim.