By Ken Thomas, medical negligence specialist with Harding Evans Solicitors and Lawyer of the Year (Welsh Law Awards).

The House of Lords has recently handed down an important Judgement in respect of so-called failed sterilisation cases.

Every year, thousands of women across the country are sterilised. Official statistics show that 11% of women in England and Wales aged between 16 and 49 have had an operation to make them sterile.

Few of those ever expect to find themselves pregnant again months or years later. However this can and does happen to a minority of unlucky women. Recent guidance suggests that there is a 1 in 200 lifetime risk of pregnancy after female sterilisation. As an aside, the failure rate for vasectomies is approximately 10 times less. There is no national register of such occurrences so actual figures are not available.

Female sterilisation can fail for any number of reasons. One such cause can be negligence on the part of the surgeon who performed the procedure. Where this has occurred, for many years now litigation has often ensued. The mother or couple in question have sought damages to cover the cost of bringing up the child born as a result of the unplanned and unwanted pregnancy. It must be generally accepted that the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy can be serious in both emotional and monetary terms. There have been many such cases here in South Wales and I have acted on several.

It used to be the case that the law allowed the parents to claim the cost of bringing the child in question up. Those were therefore really quite large claims. However, the Courts turned against this on public policy grounds in 1999. It was decided that in principle, these child- rearing costs should not be recoverable, certainly not where the child was healthy. Moreover, a decision of the House of Lords within the last few months has refined the law further.

Essentially, pursuant to that case there is now a conventional award of £15,000 in all types of failed sterilisation cases. That is meant to compensate the parents for their loss of amenity. It is unclear whether this is also the case in the even more unfortunate situation where, following a failed sterilisation, the child is born with a disability.

In any event, any parents wishing to bring such claims must adhere to the general rule and commence proceedings within 3 years.