Judge Decides "Lost Love and Affection" Claim Invalid [21st May 2012]
A man who claimed compensation from the NHS for a medical mistake which cost the life of his wife has had part of his payment taken from him after it emerged he had been cheating on his wife. An error by paramedics who had failed to take Nicolas Taaffe's wife to hospital despite her having had a heart attack meant that Mrs Taaffe died of heart failure. Mr Taaffe was originally awarded £500,000 based on the amount his wife would have earned from her job. However the judge then cut that amount to just under £120,000 based on his opinion that the marriage would not have lasted more than a few more years. Mr Taaffe had also asked for compensation due to the loss of 'love and affection'. However this was not granted. It emerged in court that Mr Taaffe had been involved in a long-standing affair with another woman with whom he had a daughter of 14 and another child soon after his wife's death. He claimed the affair had ended but had rekindled after his wife had died. Related Stories: Compensation for paramedic blunder slashed over husbands affair - www.telegraph.co.uk The man who spent eight years in prison after being convicted of the murder of TV presenter Jill Dando in 1999 is to sue for compensation. Barry George who was cleared of the murder in 2008 is launching a test case which will help to establish who can receive payments when a miscarriage of justice has occurred. Five other similar test cases are also being put forward after a landmark case in the Supreme Court a year ago which redefined what is meant by a miscarriage of justice. It is aimed at making it possible to apply for compensation even when innocence cannot be proven beyond reasonable doubt. Mr George has already been rejected for compensation from the Ministry of Justice after it was found that he was not legally entitled at the time. His lawyers believe he could be entitled as much as £500,000 which is the top amount this type of claim can achieve. Mr George is waiting to hear if he can get legal aid to fight his case. Related Stories: Barry George to sue for compensation - www.independent.co.uk Barry George to test law for compensation - uk.news.yahoo.com Vince Cable has spoken out against recent government proposals to change employment laws to make it easier to fire employees. Mr Cable has said that the authors of a report on the new laws seem to think that their ideas will mean that employers would be more likely to start hiring again. He describes this notion as nonsense. The study which was commissioned by the government suggests that firms should be given more flexibility to make redundancies and that equality rules should be eased. The proposals would mean an end to the 90 redundancy consultation period, replacing it with 30 days; a cap on compensation for unfair dismissal claims; the scrapping of laws which make employers responsible for third party harassment and a restriction on which rights can be carried across to new owners when businesses change hands. Mr Cable points out that employees are an asset, not a cost and he would like to see evidence of how these proposals would help. Related Stories: Plans to cut employment rights 'complete nonsense' says Cable - www.telegraph.co.uk A server problem has meant that HSBC account holders were unable to access their accounts, make payments or withdraw cash on Sunday 20 May. Some customers were so inconvenienced that they will be asking for compensation. Some businesses missed out on Internet sales and others were embarrassed when they were unable to pay for goods or services. Others said they would be closing their accounts. HSBC have said that the problems were due to a hardware failure and caused issues for around two hours for withdrawals and other services were affected for a longer period of time. A spokesperson from the bank has said that they are very sorry and only a small minority of customers were affected. This is the second such outage in around 6 months. Customers took to Twitter to complain and ask for compensation. Related Stories: HSBC customers hit by computer glitch - www.telegraph.co.uk HSBC fault sparks credit card freeze - www.metro.co.uk  |
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