Home / Anatomy of a Claim
An interactive · three years in three minutes
The same treatment, the same disappointed patient, the same solicitor's letter arriving eighteen months later. Follow the case as it actually unfolds: the pitfalls, the disclosure, the expert witnesses, the settlement. Then flip one switch, and watch the whole story end the other way. The only thing that changes is what was written down.
The case file
A real-world composite. Nothing clinical went wrong on the day. Everything that follows is decided by the record.
Step 1 of 2 Scroll slowly through the case below: the file travels the timeline and the defensibility gauge falls as the gaps add up. Step 2 of 2 Then flip the switch to Prepared and scroll again, the same case and the same day, rewritten by the record.
Scroll the timeline. The file follows. Then flip the switch to rewrite it.
Consultation and treatment happen in the same visit. A generic consent form is signed at the end. The note reads: “Discussed treatment. Patient happy to proceed.” No photographs. No batch number. No cooling-off period.
Consultation on 3 March; treatment on 14 March, an 11-day reflection period, documented. Material risks tailored to this patient and her questions recorded. Alternatives (no treatment, skin boosters, filler) weighed on paper. Pre-treatment photos on file. Batch H1247-B, 0.5 ml per side, injection map appended.
The result settles differently from what she pictured. She feels she was never warned it could look like this, and that no one offered an alternative. Fourteen months on, both memories of the consultation have faded.
The same disappointment surfaces. But the record has already frozen exactly what was discussed, offered and declined, fourteen months before anyone needs it.
A letter of claim lands. The patient has a solicitor; the solicitor has a template. The allegations are familiar: inadequate consent, material risks not explained, “no reasonable alternatives offered.”
The identical letter arrives. The template does not know the difference. But within the week you send a complete, ordered record to your indemnifier.
Your full record is requested: consent, consultation notes, photographs, batch numbers, aftercare. What you can produce is a signed generic form and one line of notes. The gaps are the case now.
Disclosure is a formality. The bundle answers every question before it is asked: dated consultation, tailored risks, alternatives, reflection period, photographs, batch and injection map.
An independent medico-legal expert is instructed for the claimant. Working only from the file, they report that the consent process fell below the Montgomery standard. Your own expert is handed the same empty note, and has nothing to defend it with.
Both experts review the same detailed file. The defence expert concludes the consent was, if anything, exemplary: a documented dialogue with risks and alternatives. The claimant's own expert struggles to support a breach.
A formal settlement offer forces a decision. Fight on, with costs climbing every month, or settle to stop the bleeding. Weak records make fighting ruinously expensive, so the pressure is all on you.
Seeing the file, the claimant's solicitor reassesses. A claim that looked routine now looks unwinnable. The pressure shifts across the table.
On advice, you settle. Thirty months after a treatment you barely remember, it is over. But the cost has been counted in more than money.
The claim is discontinued. There is no trial, no payout, and no admission, because there was never anything to admit.
You didn't lose on the clinical outcome. You lost on the paperwork.
The record answered every question before it was asked.
This case is an illustrative composite, not a specific client. Figures such as the two to three year time to resolution, and the ratio of legal costs to damages in lower-value claims, reflect published UK clinical negligence and aesthetics examples. Individual cases vary. Sources include Hamilton Fraser aesthetics claims data (2025) and published clinical negligence commentary.
Where we come in
Someone built that consent system, that cooling-off protocol and that record-keeping standard, long before the patient sat down. That is the whole of what Cleritas does: make sure the version of this story you live through is the one on the right. Clinician-founded and guided by Professor Irfan Jeeva, a medico-legal expert witness, so we have stood where you stand and we know precisely what a claimant solicitor looks for, because we have read the files.
✓ You've now seen both endings.
The Readiness Score scores your consent, records and consultation across the five pillars of defensibility. No email required, and the only person who sees the result is you.
The questions this raises
Most clinical negligence claims take two to three years from the first letter of claim to resolution, and longer if they head towards trial. The treatment is often 12–18 months in the past before the solicitor makes contact, so you are asked to account for a consultation you can barely remember. That is exactly why the record written on the day outweighs anyone's recollection.
Disclosure is the stage where each side must produce the relevant documents. For you that is the full record: consent, consultation notes, photographs, batch numbers, dose and sites, aftercare. A claimant's solicitor reads it looking for what is missing: every gap becomes an argument, every generic form becomes an exhibit. A complete file turns disclosure from your weakest moment into your strongest.
An independent expert reviews the records and opines on whether care and consent met the legal standard: in consent, the Montgomery test on material risks and the McCulloch test on reasonable alternatives. The expert works only from the documents. A detailed, contemporaneous record gives the defence expert something to defend; an empty note gives them nothing.
In lower-value claims, the costs of running the case routinely exceed the damages awarded. Published aesthetics examples include roughly £13,000 in damages against about £53,000 in costs. Weak records don't just risk a loss. They make the whole case expensive, because every gap must be investigated and argued instead of simply answered from the file.
They rarely stop a patient complaining. But they change how it ends. A documented dialogue with tailored risks, alternatives and time to reflect makes a claim narrow, stall or discontinue, and lets your indemnifier negotiate from strength. The clinical outcome is often identical in both stories; the paperwork is the variable that writes the ending.
Montgomery v Lanarkshire (2015) changed the test: consent is no longer what a reasonable doctor would disclose, but what a reasonable patient would want to know, plus anything this particular patient would attach significance to. McCulloch (2023) added that you must also record the reasonable alternatives you considered and discussed. A signed generic form satisfies neither on its own. Read the full explainer →