The Supreme Court heard a rare leapfrog appeal last month in CCC v Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. At issue was recoverability of damages for lost years where, as here, the claimant was a child aged but ten at the time of this hearing. C sought to recover damages for loss of income for the period between the end of her life expectancy and what would have been her normal life expectancy. My impression, solely based on what I heard in the opening 30 minutes, was that the court was against her.
In the first ten minutes Lord Reed suggested that an old Court of Appeal decision, Croke (a minor) v Wiseman [1981] 3 All ER 852, [1982] 1 WLR 71, which prohibited recovery in the case of a young, severely injured child, was correct. That decision was binding upon the High Court in CCC, hence the leapfrog. It emerged that the week before the
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