Howard Elgot and Abigail Telford succeed in E.Coli 157 and Critical Illness Brain Damage Claims
DXC v South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust and Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust – 24th October 2025
On 24th October 2025 the High Court in London approved a settlement at 90% of the full value of her claims in favour of a child who had contracted E. Coli 157 in 2011 during an outbreak at the Playdays Nursery, Middlesbrough, owned and operated by the South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust. The claim had been listed for a 12 day High Court Trial with 12 Expert Witnesses and 15 Lay Witnesses.
Five children and a nursery nurse became infected. As a result of her infection the Claimant suffered permanent severe brain and renal damage and she has had to undergo a kidney transplant. The claim is likely to be worth several million pounds.
Howard Elgot and Abigail Telford instructed by David Bradshaw of Hay and Kilner, appeared for the successful Claimant.
The name of the Claimant has been anonymised by an order of the High Court to DXC.
Infectious disease claims create novel problems of causation. Few similar cases have succeeded. The only case relatively similar to the instant case, i.e. a case dependent upon showing an avoidable transmission of infectious disease in a workplace or communal setting that has reached the higher courts, is Sanderson v Hull [2009] EWCA Civ 1211, a case involving the campylobacter bacterium infection of a woman working as a turkey plucker. The infection was contracted from an infected turkey. Somewhat surprisingly on the facts of that case, the claimant lost.
It is obvious that child to child transmission of E. Coli in a nursery cannot be prevented if the nursery nurses are unaware that one of the children was or might be infected with a diarrhoeal illness.
The somewhat simplified summary below demonstrates the difficulties the Claimant faced when bringing her claim.
In the week of the E. Coli outbreak DXC attended the nursery on 3rd and 4th August. On the facts of her case the Claimant had to show that that on a balance of probabilities another child (or nursery nurse) introduced the bacteria into the nursery on a date before 3rd August 2011, that child (or nursery nurse) did not attend the nursery at the same time as DXC, that there was environmental transmission to DXC at the nursery, rather than person to person transmission, and that environmental transmission to DXC would have probably have been prevented had reasonable precautions been taken at the nursery.
There was a second part to the Claimant’s claim. DXC was eventually admitted to the Royal Victoria Hospital, Newcastle, but unfortunately her bowel perforated on 26th August. There was an admitted delay in diagnosis, and the surgery that the Claimant urgently required was not caried out until 22.30 on Monday 28th August 2011. On the Claimant’s case there was a delay of 47.5 hours; on the Defendant’s case there was a delay of 33.5 hours.
Up to the meeting of the paediatric neurologists the Newcastle Trust denied that either period of delay made any difference to the Claimant’s brain or renal injuries, but the experts agreed that the severe systemic illness with sepsis (also termed critical illness) suffered by the Claimant after her bowel had perforated made a material contribution to the extent of the brain damage suffered by the Claimant, and that even the shorter delay admitted by the Defendant was sufficient to make a further material contribution.
Thus in relation to the brain injury suffered by the Claimant, but not in relation to her renal injuries, she was able to rely upon the principle in Williams v Bermuda Hospitals Board 2016 AC 888 that where on the balance of probabilities an injury had been caused by two or more factors operating cumulatively, one or more of which was in breach of duty, the Claimant will succeed in full unless the injury can be categorised as a divisible injury.
