Medical litigation faces British revolution

Proposals to revolutionise the way that medical negligence litigation works in England and Wales are being drawn up by Lord Woolf, the law lord charged by the Lord Chancellor with finding ways to make the civil justice system simpler, cheaper, and more accessible. The plans, to be finalised in a report next July, aim to make the system less led by lawyers and less adversarial. Lord Woolf, who produced interim proposals for overhauling the civil justice system last year, told doctors last week that medical malpractice claims displayed some of the worst manifestations of the system. Speaking at a conference at the Royal Society of Medicine in London, he added: “We want to find a situation where …