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Making a medical negligence claim: Insights from a solicitor

• Boyes Turner

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What happens when medical treatment goes wrong? 

Tara Pileggi-Byrne, Associate Solicitor, explains what it is like working in the medical negligence team. 

Growing up in a small Welsh valley town with Irish and Malaysian parents, Tara never imagined she'd become a solicitor specialising in medical negligence. After discovering her squeamishness ruled out a medical career, she found her calling in law, particularly helping those who've suffered life-changing injuries through substandard healthcare.

Every day, Tara helps clients navigate the aftermath of devastating medical errors spinal cord injuries, brain haemorrhages, sepsis cases, and amputations. She approaches each case with compassion, understanding that clients have often spent months gathering the courage to make that first contact. Working alongside medical experts and barristers, she meticulously builds cases that can restore not just financial security, but dignity and independence.

Through her role as a social mobility champion, Tara also works to ensure the legal profession becomes more accessible to students from all backgrounds, mentoring young people who might otherwise never consider law as a viable career path. 

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Ruth Meyer:

Hello, my name is Ruth Mayer, a partner in the Court Protection Team of Boys Turner Solicitors, and joining me today is Tara Pelleggi-Byrne, a solicitor in the Clinical Negotiations Team at Boys Turner. Hello, tara, hi, ruth, tara and I will be discussing serious medical claims and how they're dealt with. Tara, tell me about your background.

Tara Pileggi-Byrne:

So I am from an immigrant background, so my father is Irish, my mother is Malaysian and I grew up in South Wales, so we were quite an unusual family growing up in the small valley town that we lived. I went to my local comprehensive school and that's where I did my A-levels and then made the decision to go on to university.

Ruth Meyer:

So why did you choose law when you left school? I?

Tara Pileggi-Byrne:

wasn't really sure what I wanted to do Originally. I had thought I'd go into the medical profession of some sort, but realised quite quickly that I was squeamish and blood makes me faint. So I redirected what I wanted to do and because neither of my parents had gone to university, I wasn't too sure as to what it involved or what would be a good topic to pick. So I ended up picking law, somewhat, because I thought I would just be a lawyer at the end of it. I didn't really know what that meant, but I thought it would give me a good job essentially, and I was probably somewhat influenced by people I saw on telly, people I'd read about in books. So I went on to do my law degree at Warwick and then I did some further education back home in Cardiff.

Ruth Meyer:

So notoriously, law is quite difficult to get into. So how did you actually get into your area of work?

Tara Pileggi-Byrne:

So during my first summer at home from university, I just went around my local town handing out my CV, basically just trying to get my foot in the door in any area I possibly could, and I ended up getting a call back from a small firm. There was about five people and all they did was medical negligence and personal injury work. So it was a hugely valuable experience. They had lots of time to sit with me and explain to me what it involved, and it was really an insight into meeting clients and actually seeing what difference I could make to people's lives, which was somewhat what I wanted to do, and so that was really it. I paralegaled with them for a few years before I then moved to a firm at Bristol where I then qualified through a non-traditional route called Silex and then became a solicitor became a solicitor.

Ruth Meyer:

I understand you are a social mobility champion at Boys' Turn, also a social mobility foundation mentor. Could you just tell me a little bit about what that actually means and what you do?

Tara Pileggi-Byrne:

Yeah, of course.

Tara Pileggi-Byrne:

So I think, coming from perhaps a somewhat unusual background within the legal profession, I'm quite keen to get junior lawyers from different backgrounds with diverse ways of thinking to enhance our profession. So one of the things that I do is I mentor with the Social Mobility Foundation. I work with year 12 pupils going into year 13. I help them with whatever they need. So it depends. Some of them have an interest in law so they're looking for help with their personal statements to go to university. Some of them are thinking about an apprenticeship in law, so I might be helping them with applications or mock interviews and then with my work at Boy's Turner as our social mobility champion. It sort of ties in with the mentoring that I do. For example, recently we went into a local school at Bracknell as part of the Speakers for Schools project and we basically spoke to some Year 9 and 10 pupils about what a career in law could look like, how essentially it is for everyone and just sort of giving young people the options that perhaps they thought they might not have had.

Ruth Meyer:

So you've moved into law now and you're doing medical negligence. What exactly does that mean?

Tara Pileggi-Byrne:

Yeah, so it's quite easy to get hung up on the sort of jargon and the words around medical negligence and what it means. And quite briefly, it just means where someone has received medical treatment that has fallen below a reasonable standard and it's resulted in an injury. So you've had medical treatment, whether it be through a GP surgery, a hospital, in an NHS or a private setting, and something has gone wrong and you have suffered an injury, unfortunately as a result of that treatment.

Ruth Meyer:

And in your day-to-day job, what do you do yourself?

Tara Pileggi-Byrne:

Yeah. So when I first started in that small high street firm, I was given loads of medical records so thousands of pages, and I was told to sort of go through them and put them in some sort of logical order. And as laborious as that was going through all that paperwork I'm quite nosy, so it was quite interesting. But it also gave me a real insight into how important those records were and how they would sort of form the foundation of any case that we were to take forward. And then, sort of as my career progressed, my day to day now involves speaking with my clients and their families about what they've gone through, what their concerns are, so we can prepare witness statements for them.

Tara Pileggi-Byrne:

I speak to medical experts, so doctors who can help me with the medicine, because as much as I'm legally qualified, I don't know the ins and outs of every surgery and the medicine. I need a doctor to help me with that. And then I also deal with sort of barristers on a regular basis who sort of come in and help us with sort of progressing the case. And if it were ultimately to go to a trial, we are preparing the case as if it would end up at a final hearing.

Ruth Meyer:

I understand you also work with charities.

Tara Pileggi-Byrne:

We do so. A lot of the work we do involves sort of signposting our clients and making sure they have the right support that they need on the ground, because a legal case can take some time, and so we work with Sesky, which is a corda equina charity, the Spinal Injuries Association, bowel Cancer UK, and we also have links with local neonatal charities as well, it does sound that you would be talking to clients about some really serious issues.

Ruth Meyer:

it must be quite difficult. How do you make them feel comfortable? Difficult how do you make them feel comfortable? How do you make them put their trust in you?

Tara Pileggi-Byrne:

it's something I've always been mindful of that our clients are coming to us, talking to us about really sensitive, somewhat traumatic experiences, and I've no doubt that they have sat in front of the computer drafting and redrafting an email to send to a solicitor, or picked up the phone and put it back down numerous times.

Tara Pileggi-Byrne:

So, as much as I know, it's the first port of contact with me. When I'm speaking with them, I know that they could have been weeks, maybe even months, before they were able to make that contact. So it's somewhat I try and take it at their own pace. As to, all I really need to know is what their concerns are, briefly, what the background is as to what's happened to them. I'm not expecting our clients to be able to remember all the dates, all the people involved in their treatment. That's something that I can help with if we're able to help and look into a claim. It's really just learning what their concerns are and taking it at their own pace and explaining to them what a legal case involves so that they are prepared for every step that comes along.

Ruth Meyer:

It does sound really fascinating. So what sort of cases do you actually do? Can you give some examples?

Tara Pileggi-Byrne:

Yeah, of course. So I deal with clients who have had life-changing injuries, so quite severe injuries. So I've mentioned spinal cord injury, for example, brain injury cases involving brain hemorrhages. I also deal with cases relating to infection and sepsis, which is quite often in the news, as well as amputation cases, which can be somewhat linked with our infection cases as well, and our wider teams, our partners in the team. They deal with birth injury work, so cases where something might have gone wrong during maternity care and has resulted in a child having cerebral palsy, for example. So they're hugely knowledgeable in that area.

Ruth Meyer:

And what would you say is the most rewarding aspect of the work that you do?

Tara Pileggi-Byrne:

So yeah, the day-to-day, when you're dealing with such difficult topics, there has to be something at the end of it as to why you do what you do, and I think it is so rewarding when I see the difference that compensation can make to someone's life. So the purpose of compensation is to put someone back in the position they would have been had the injury not occurred. And in reality you can't do that. Money can't change what has happened. It can't essentially turn back time. What it can do is it can make things a little bit easier. It can give someone back their hobbies.

Tara Pileggi-Byrne:

For example, we had a client a few years ago that I still think about and I still talk about him, because he had an amputation of one of his legs and he was a keen canoeist beforehand and all he wanted to do was get back on the water and as part of his compensation award he was able to get a water limb.

Tara Pileggi-Byrne:

He was able to get a good prosthetic limb that fitted and he could use an adapted ramp to get into his canoe and get back on the water. And just having that, seeing that difference, it made him an improvement in his quality of life and it was something we spoke about for years during the claim and it was just a real highlight to know that I'd been a little part of that to help him. And I think, as well as sort of independence and quality of life, it's about dignity as well. A lot of our spinal cord cases, for example, there's issues relating to bowel and bladder and they're really difficult issues to talk about. And just being able to use the toilet without someone's help is life-changing in itself. It's revolutionary to someone's day-to-day life. So it's seeing the difference that it can make to people's lives is why I do what I do.

Ruth Meyer:

Tara, thank you so much for talking to me and providing such an insight into the work you do. I know these are really difficult subjects to deal with, so it's really interesting to listen to what you do and how you help others. So, thank you, no problem. Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you're interested in checking out more episodes, then go to the Boys Turner website. You can also follow us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Goodbye.