Victims of child care errors win right to sue

Children wrongly diagnosed as abused or mistakenly taken into care (state custody) at any time in the last 21 years can sue the doctors or social workers responsible, the appeal court (in Britian) has ruled in a landmark judgment.

In a decision likely to be challenged on appeal in the House of Lords, the judges ruled that compensation claims could be brought even where the diagnosis and care proceedings happened before the Human Rights Act came into force. The ruling opens the possibility of claims dating back 21 years because the three-year time limit for launching legal action only starts running once a child reaches 18.

Several psychiatric abuse cases are cited in the article as being part of the decision