How Does a Dental Negligence Claim Work with the Dental Law Partnership?
If you’ve completed our self-assessment tool and there’s a possibility that you could have been a victim of dental negligence in England and Wales, we may be able to pursue a compensation claim for you.
Every case is different, but in most situations, the dental negligence claims process will follow these steps:
- When you contact our expert team to start your claim, we’ll go through a questionnaire with you to establish the facts of the case. This questionnaire will determine whether we can proceed with your claim.
- Once your claim has been accepted on an initial basis, we’ll provide some paperwork to sign, before passing your information to our paralegal team. We’ll also collect your dental care records and create a timeline for your case.
- Our in-house dento-legal team will assess your claim further, before deciding whether it’s strong enough to pursue.
- If we accept your claim, you will be allocated one of our dental solicitors to proceed with your case. A letter of claim will be drafted and sent to the defendant, who has a total of four months to respond. The negotiation process can then begin.
- Most of our claims are resolved during the negotiations stage, but in some situations, we may have to take your case to court. If this happens, your solicitor will go through the next steps with you.
Our dental negligence claims are always funded on a no-win, no-fee basis, meaning we’ll only charge al fee for our services if your case is successful. This is because we believe that money should not be a barrier to justice, aiming to help as many people as possible with our legal services.
In a dental negligence claim, you may be able to claim compensation for the following:
When most people think of a dental or medical negligence claim, they tend to think of personal injury cases – according to Citizens Advice, the most common claim in personal injury lawsuits is for negligence. Whilst physical injury is certainly one category that you can claim for, there are also several other aspects of negligence that you can include within your compensation case.
The most common things to claim for during dental litigation are:
- Psychological trauma – Dental negligence can be particularly harmful to your mental health and may possibly lead to future dental anxiety – particularly if you already have a fear of the dentist.
- Financial loss – You can claim financial losses in some situations – for example, if you’ve had to pay for restorative dentistry after your dentist carried out dental work incorrectly.
- Misdiagnosis claims – If your dentist fails to diagnose an oral health issue or misdiagnoses you with the wrong condition, you could make a claim. Misdiagnosis claims can be serious – particularly when considering oral health conditions like periodontal disease (advanced gum disease) and mouth cancer.
- Failure to obtain patient consent claims – Before carrying out work on your teeth, your dentist has to receive voluntary informed consent from you. This includes informing you of any possible risks, side effects and alternative treatments – if your dentist doesn’t do this and something goes wrong, you may be able to open a dental negligence case.
Some people may be extremely unlucky and suffer several types of injury during negligent treatment – for example, if your dentist extracts the wrong tooth and causes tooth nerve damage at the same time.
Start Your Dental Negligence Claim Today
Hopefully, you should now have a better understanding of the dental negligence claims process and whether you’ve suffered negligent dental treatment
If you have experienced dental negligence, there’s a good chance our expert team of specialist dental solicitors will be able to help you. Our team is made up of both dentists and lawyers, giving us all the knowledge needed to be able to process your claim with care.
You can start your claim here – alternatively, please request a callback from our team to discuss your options further.
