Struck-off doctor loses court battle
Friday 22nd May 2009, 11:25AM BST.
Controversial paediatrician Dr David Southall today lost his High Court battle against a decision to strike him off the medical register for serious professional misconduct.
The General Medical Council’s fitness to practise panel decided in December 2007 that he abused his position by accusing a mother of drugging and murdering her son.
The panel found that Dr Southall’s actions added to the distress of the mother – Mrs M, from Shropshire – whose 10-year-old boy hanged himself in 1996.
It accused him of having a “deep-seated attitudinal problem”.
Dr Southall made the accusations after being asked by a county council to provide an independent expert report related to the safety of Mrs M’s surviving son.
His lawyers had argued at the High Court that the panel failed to give any or adequate weight to inconsistencies in Mrs M’s evidence, and to the totality of evidence from witnesses, including social workers. The lawyers said that it was Dr Southall’s concern that the panel “did not understand, certainly in its final form, what child protection involved and the part played by doctors like him”.
But today Mr Justice Blake, sitting at the High Court in London, ruled the decision to strike him off was justified.
The judge said: “He was speculating on non-medical matters in an offensive manner entirely inconsistent with the status of an independent expert.”
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