Daughters’ shock as Inquest shows footage of father being treated “like a prisoner” hours before his death in hospital

An inquest into the death of 52 year old Paul Stockton has seen 'disturbing' CCTV footage and has been told that he 'probably would have survived' if he'd been treated sooner.

PotterReesDolan Serious Injury Solicitors represented Paul Stockton’s three daughters in a clinical negligence claim against Trafford General Hospital where Paul Stockton had been admitted after suffering a seizure in October 2013.

The Manchester Coroner, sitting with a jury, heard last week about the circumstances surrounding Paul Stockton's death.

The Inquest saw extensive CCTV footage, which the family watched, showing a security guard, who was employed for the safety of patients, sitting on Mr Stockton for 10 minutes.

The footage also showed him being grabbed and pinned against a wall. It was also alleged in evidence that he was slapped by the same security guard whilst in the bathroom.

The Stockton family have maintained throughout that the treatment he received was adversely affected because he was thought to be an alcoholic and there was a failure on the part of hospital staff to recognise and treat his ultimately fatal head injury.

Lucy Stockton, one of Paul Stockton's daughters and pictured on the right, said:

The main concern for us as a family was that the hospital didn’t detect his head injury, they ignored all the signs and just treated him as an alcoholic. During the Inquest, the doctor who decided against sending him for a CT scan told us that he didn’t think he really needed one but also didn’t think he would co-operate. To us this was just further evidence that no-one was taking his injury seriously and they just saw him as a trouble maker and not someone worth bothering with.

Watching the CCTV footage was very distressing as we knew that this was the last 20 hours of our dad’s life and he just looked helpless, as if he was being treated like a prisoner in a custody cell, not someone who was in actual fact seriously ill. It was really upsetting and made us all feel helpless too.

We feel very let down by the Trust as from the moment he walked into Trafford General until after he died we feel that everything they did was wrong and they let him down, and let us all down as a family. We thought he died of natural causes until four months later when we received an incident report out of the blue outlining all the failings of the hospital including the alleged assault by the security guard.

Paul Stockton was admitted to Trafford General Hospital on the 15^th October 2013 following a seizure and, although he was recovering well, he died three days later with no warning as far as his family were concerned.

At the time of this death, his daughters were informed he had a brain haemorrhage and, following a post mortem examination, the Coroner’s office issued a certificate stating that he had died of natural causes. As far as the family was concerned it was a terrible tragedy but was just ‘one of those things’.

Then, four months later, in February 2014, completely out of the blue, the family received a report into the circumstances surrounding Mr Stockton’s care, which had been carried out by a ‘High Level Investigation Team’ at Trafford General. The family were shocked to read its contents, much of which they hadn’t known, including the fact that Mr Stockton had fallen over, suffering a head injury which hadn’t been properly treated and that he’d allegedly been ‘slapped’ by a security guard.

It was following the revelations of this report that Mr Stockton’s daughters referred the matter back to the Coroner resulting in last week’s Inquest.

In the intervening period, Potter Rees Dolan, acting on behalf of Mr Stockton’s daughters, pursued a clinical negligence claim against the hospital. The family were pleased to reach an out of court settlement but were very disappointed that despite the shocking circumstances surrounding their father’s death, the Trust responsible for Trafford General were unwilling to pay for their legal representation at the Inquest.

Hannah Bottomley, clinical negligence solicitor at PotterReesDolan, represented the family. She said:

This was a particularly tragic case where due to multiple failures within the hospital system Mr Stockton’s very serious brain injury was not recognized resulting in his premature death. Mr Stockton’s daughters have been through a very distressing time, exacerbated by the initial lack of openness from the hospital and the subsequent refusal by the Trust to meet their legal representation costs at Inquest.

This Inquest was especially distressing and it is frustrating and disappointing that Mr Stockton’s daughters were unable to be supported in the way that they, and we, had hoped. Hopefully the Trust has learned lessons from this appalling sequence of events.