Most of the 63 prospective claimants in Webster and others v Treloars Trust [2025] EWHC 516 (KB) attended the school’s haemophilia centre and were infected with HIV and/or hepatitis as a result of exposure to blood products. The former pupils say neither they nor their parents were properly consulted or given an opportunity to consent to their treatment.
Dismissing their application this week, however, Senior Master Cook said the decision of whether to grant a GLO was ‘primarily one of case management’.
Senior Master Cook said: ‘It is important that it should be understood this does not mean the court is preventing these potential claims from being progressed or is indicating any view upon the merits of the potential claims… My decision relates solely to the use of a GLO as the appropriate vehicle through which such claims should be progressed…’.
Treloar’s was criticised last year in the final report of the Infected Blood Inquiry, which investigated the treatment of about 30,000 people with contaminated National Health Service blood products. The government is currently in the process of setting up a tariff-based compensation scheme.
Referring to this scheme, Senior Master Cook said the applicants had failed to show they would be likely to recover less under it than they would recover through litigation.
He said he regarded the scheme as ‘a form of alternative dispute resolution. The overriding objective of the CPR was modified, with effect from 1 October 2024 to give effect to the Court of Appeal’s decision in Churchill v Merthyr Tydfil CBC [2023] EWCA Civ 1416, to require the court to promote and use alternative dispute resolution’.
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