Key takeaways
Supreme Court overturns 40-year bar on child claims
Children can now recover lost-years damages like adults.
Decision reshapes valuation in high-value injury cases
Claims require deeper modelling of education, career and earnings.
Defendants face greater complexity and higher exposure
Adult assessment principles now apply directly to child claimants.
On 18 February 2026 the Supreme Court handed down its long anticipated judgment in CCC -v- Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust [2026] UKSC 5, marking one of the most significant developments in clinical negligence damages in decades.
The Court has confirmed that child claimants are no longer barred from recovering 'lost years' damages, overturning more than 40 years of established principle.
Long-standing legal principle
The House of Lords established in the case of Pickett that adults whose life expectancy had been reduced because of negligence may recover the earnings they would have received during the years of life they would now lose. The Pickett principle was later confirmed in the case of Gammell and has been accepted practice for a significant number of years.
However, the long-standing precedent of Croke, meant that child claimants were treated differently. The Court of Appeal held in Croke that such claims for lost years were not recoverable by child claimants on the basis that they were unlikely to have dependants and such claims were considered to be too speculative. As a result, for over four decades, children with shortened life expectancy due to clinical negligence were prevented from recovering these damages.
The judgment in CCC
By a 4-1 majority, the Supreme Court ruled in CCC that the precedent set down in Croke was inconsistent with legal principle and the relevant authorities. It was held that children must be treated the same as adults when applying the foundational principle of tort law restitutio in integrum (i.e. to put the claimant back in the position they were in 'but for' the negligence).
Lord Reed confirmed that:
The absence of dependants is irrelevant as the claim relates to the child’s own loss, and the right to damages 'is not in any way dependent on how they might be used'.
Speculation and difficulty in assessing future earnings does not justify refusing compensation:
'The pecuniary loss caused by the injury is more difficult to assess, because there are many more contingencies involved in the attempt to forecast the child's likely earnings (and, in relation to the lost years, the likely living expenses) if he or she had not been injured. But that is always true of a claim based on the loss of future earnings or of earning capacity: even in the case of an adult claimant, the future is uncertain and subject to countless contingencies. Such a claim is always for the loss of something which was uncertain. Whether the claimant is an adult or a child, the uncertainty is taken into account in the court's assessment. That assessment must, of course, be based on evidence or, to the extent that it is legitimate, judicial knowledge.'
The Court was clear that uncertainty is common across many heads of future loss, and the correct approach remains that 'the court must assess damages as best it can on the evidence reasonably available.'
The implications of CCC in clinical negligence claims
The judgment in CCC will significantly reshape the landscape for high-value birth injury claims and will undoubtedly give rise to higher awards, causing Defendants to revisit reserving.
The valuation of ‘lost years’ damages will also require further complex evidential modelling to establish a child claimant’s likely education, career and earnings trajectory, in turn giving rise to increased litigation costs.
Defendants will now need to apply the usual principles adopted when assessing adult ‘lost years’ claims, to claims brought on behalf of children.
The 'but for' annual net earnings figure (multiplicand) will need to be adjusted to deduct the cost of working (travel, clothes, works shoes and so on) at 15% of earnings per Eagle -v- Chambers No.2.
It will also be important to carefully consider 'but-for' expenditure from earnings on outgoings, and account for the fact that, in the 'but-for' situation, a claimant would have incurred expenditure which would have necessarily come out of earnings and avoid a potential windfall. Deductions may need to be made for:
Any rental costs that would have been incurred
Whether a property would have been purchased and if so at what value and how the properly would likely have been acquired (e.g. by way of a mortgage and whether this would likely have been shared with a partner)
The monthly cost of utilities
Defendants will need to give careful consideration to the appropriate multiplier (the number applied to the multiplicand to calculate the present lump sum value), discounting for:
accelerated receipt
for periods of not working bringing up children (where applicable)
other contingencies, such as the chance that a claimant would have:
been unemployed
stayed in education for considerably longer than anticipated
decided not work at all
succumbed to illness or other disability affecting their ability to work
decided not to return to work after children
took early retirement
The future
In his judgment, Lord Burrows observed that the position in law regarding lost years damages does not sit comfortably sit alongside the standard principle that a claimant cannot suffer loss after death, potentially paving the way for closer assessment of the principle of ‘lost years’ damages generally in due course.
However, for now the immediate impact is clear: child claimants can pursue lost years claims, and we should expect to see these claims routinely pleaded where applicable, and Defendants will need to be ready to respond.
Should you wish to discuss this judgment or its implications for you, please do not hesitate to reach out.
