One of the most common legal challenges that any clinician faces is an action in clinical negligence; this is no different for an aesthetic practitioner and the same basic legal rules and principles would apply. However, it is often misunderstood what a claim in clinical negligence involves and what a patient (or claimant) would need to prove in order to succeed in a claim of clinical negligence.
The law of negligence has developed incrementally over time through legal precedents established by the courts and is a subset of a body of civil law known as tort.1,2 The law of tort involves the infringement of a legal right or a legal duty and governs what occurs when one party sues another party for an infringement of that right or duty. The party bringing the case (or the ‘claim’) is known as the ‘claimant’ and the party against whom the case is brought is known as the ‘defendant’.1
In simple terms, negligence can be defined as a breach by a defendant of a legal duty of care owed to a claimant that results in actionable damage or loss to the claimant unintended by the defendant…
