Andrew Buchan (1)

Andrew is a specialist in clinical negligence and other cases involving personal injury. He has experience of a wide range of clinical negligence claims from high value brain injury, cerebral palsy and missed spinal injury claims, to claims including ambulance delays, failure to diagnose meningitis, failure to diagnose leukaemia and other types of cancer, and dental negligence claims.

His experience in personal injury covers road traffic claims, including severe spinal injury claims, workplace claims and disease claims, including fatal accident claims, work related upper limb disorder claims, manual handling claims, work equipment claims, working at height claims and claims for harassment and occupational stress.

Andrew is a co-author of Schedules of Loss: Calculating Damages, the leading practitioner textbook on schedules of loss, now in its third edition. He published the celebrated LAG Guide to Personal Injury Practice in 1991 and is currently working on updating Lewis on Clinical Negligence.

In the employment sphere, Andrew has recently been working on the Working Time Directive and Regulations 1998. In the Sayers case he argued that these Regulations should give rise to civil liability at Common Law. He was instructed to intervene on behalf of the NUT (on questions of European law) in the case of Eastwood v Magnox (House of Lords, jurisdiction of the Employment Tribunal to deal with personal injury claims). He took Sheriff v Klyne Tugs (Lowestoft) Ltd to the Court of Appeal in 1999 (jurisdiction of employment tribunal for personal injury cases). He also practices in employment law cases concerning psychiatric injury. He is an accredited mediator with CEDR (the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution). Many of his cases settle after mediation.

He was junior counsel in the groundbreaking case of Walker v Northumberland County Council, the first successful claim for stress at work. He lectures widely on the subject of occupational stress and bullying claims, and has represented hundreds of claimants and defendants reaching settlements for both first and second breakdown cases.