Susan Brown

Susan Brown, Partner and Head of Medical Negligence, is recognised by Chambers UK Legal Guide and Legal 500 as one of the leading medical negligence lawyers in the UK. She is also a member of the Legal 500 Hall of Fame which highlights individuals who have received praise from their clients for continued excellence. She is a leading specialist in high-value claims for children, teenagers and young adults with cerebral palsy and neurodevelopmental disability caused by negligent birth injury and neonatal brain injury. 

Susan’s 30 years of experience in top tier clinical negligence litigation is evident in her professionalism, insight and expertise, which she combines with outstanding compassion and empathy for her clients and their families, earning her their trust and confidence, as well as the respect and admiration of her professional colleagues, barristers, medical experts and opponents.

Susan acts for infants, children, teenagers and young adults with a range of physical, cognitive, neuropsychological and behavioural disabilities, including HIE birth injury, cerebral palsy and neurodevelopmental disability from conditions such as kernicterus, meningitis and neonatal infections, hypoglycaemia, hypocarbia, and valproate injury.

She provides knowledgeable and compassionate guidance for families as they come to terms with their baby’s brain injury and support for parents navigating MNSI’s investigations and NHS Resolution’s Early Notification scheme. She is also known for her respectful and supportive relationships with her teenage and young adult clients, and understands the challenges of living with severe disability, both for the injured young person and their family.  

Susan’s experience and insight into negligent birth injury and neonatal brain injury enables her to succeed in cases which were rejected by the family’s solicitor in the child’s early years or which are now complicated by the passage of time. Her extensive experience of such claims makes her the perfect choice for families with an older child, or teenagers and young adults looking for a specialist birth injury lawyer with the necessary skills to pursue a retrospective claim. 

Susan’s impressive track record of multi-million pound compensation settlements reflects her personal commitment to making a lasting difference to the lives of disabled children and their families. Her incisive and rigorous approach to establishing liability secures early judgments and substantial interim payments for her clients. With interim funds in place, she works with the family, case managers, trusted experts and Boyes Turner’s SEN experts and Court of Protection deputy to alleviate the hardship suffered by her brain-injured clients, by providing care and respite, adapted accommodation, essential therapies, assistive technology and specialist equipment. By meeting the child’s needs at an early stage, the child and their parents can participate fully in family life and the child is given the best opportunity to achieve their full potential.

Susan is an experienced trial lawyer with a strong track record of successful judgments secured for her clients at trial. Her case of CNZ v Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS FT and The Secretary of State for Health & Social Care advanced the law on women’s rights to make informed decisions about their treatment whilst in labour, and opened the way for babies disabled by acute profound HIE brain injury to be fully compensated, based on the principle that every minute of acute profound hypoxia counts in the causation of hypoxic birth injury. In another notable and strongly contested case, Christian Cooper v Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust 2015, Susan secured compensation for a mother who was left in an unconscious, minimally responsive, PVS-like state after suffering uterine rupture and haemorrhage during a VBAC delivery performed without informed consent followed by incorrect anticoagulant therapy leading to brain injury from cardiac arrest.

Susan is also experienced in international birth injury and neonatal brain injury claims, achieving maximum value settlements for non-UK-resident clients whose birth injuries occurred in England or Wales but whose compensation must provide for their needs to be met in a foreign jurisdiction, such as Canada, New Zealand, Australia or USA.