Lost Years Claims for Children: A Turning Point in Clinical Negligence Law
On 18 February 2026 the UK Supreme Court delivered a landmark judgment rewriting a decades-old rule on lost years damages in clinical negligence cases involving children. In CCC (by her mother and litigation friend MMM) v Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust [2026] UKSC 5, the Court held by a majority of four to one that children injured by medical negligence whose life expectancy is reduced can recover lost years compensation — the financial loss caused by not living to their normal life expectancy — on the same legal basis as adults.
This development will have profound consequences for personal injury and clinical negligence practitioners, indemnifiers and insurers alike. It corrects what many commentators have described as a longstanding inconsistency in the law and opens the door to materially higher awards in catastrophic birth injury cases.
The Legal Issue: What Are Lost Years Claims?
In personal injury and clinical negligence litigation, lost years damages are claimed when a tortious injury shortens a claimant’s life expectancy. Traditionally, courts have compensated claimants not only for past and future losses up to their anticipated earlier death, but also for the economic losses they would have suffered had they lived their full life. These losses include income they would have earned, and pension benefits they would have received during the “lost years” of their life.
For adults and adolescent claimants, lost years damages have been recoverable since the House of Lords’ decisions in Pickett v British Rail Engineering Ltd [1980] AC 136 and Gammell v Wilson [1982] AC 27, which held that damages for such pecuniary loss were part of English law.
However, for more than 40 years, a conflicting rule from the Court of Appeal in Croke v Wiseman [1982] 1 WLR 71 prevented the recovery of lost years damages in cases where the claimant was a young child. The rationale was that awards for income in years that the child would never live were too speculative and that the absence of future dependants made such compensation inappropriate.
Facts of CCC v Sheffield Teaching Hospitals
The claimant “CCC” suffered catastrophic brain injury caused by hypoxia at birth in 2015, due to admitted clinical negligence by the Trust. She has severe and permanent disabilities, is entirely dependent on others, and her agreed life expectancy is to age 29.
At the quantum trial, the parties agreed that but for the injury CCC would have gone on to gain qualifications, entered the workforce and worked until age 68, subsequently receiving pension benefits. Her loss of earnings to age 29 was agreed at £160,000.
The unresolved question was whether the lost years — the decades after age 29 that she would have worked and lived — could be compensated. The trial judge declined to assess this element because he felt bound by Croke, which barred such awards for young child claimants. With the parties’ consent, he granted a leapfrog certificate to appeal directly to the Supreme Court on the legal issue.
The Supreme Court Majority Judgment
In a judgment delivered by Lord Reed (with whom Lord Briggs, Lord Burrows and Lord Stephens agreed), the Supreme Court allowed CCC’s appeal by a majority of 4–1. The Court held that:
1. The principle in Pickett and Gammell applies equally to children and adults — there is no legal basis to deny lost years damages to a claimant injured in early childhood simply because of age.
2. The central reasoning in Croke — that children could not have dependants and that future earnings were speculative — was inconsistent with the earlier House of Lords authorities. The majority concluded that lost years damages are recoverable in principle where a claimant’s life has been shortened by negligence and the economic loss can be demonstrated on ordinary evidential principles.
3. The right to damages is the claimant’s own, not dependent on how any award would be spent. Denying compensation on the basis of absence of dependants or speculative future was inconsistent with the common law compensatory principle.
4. The Court confirmed that it had not been asked to revisit the fundamental basis for lost years awards or to specify how such damages should be assessed.
The Dissenting Opinion
Lady Rose was the sole dissenter. Consistent with commentary from practitioners ahead of the hearing, she emphasised the practical difficulties in assessing future earnings for someone injured at birth, noting that evidence about specific careers, earning potential, and pension prospects will often be lacking. Those concerns, in her view, counselled caution in extending lost years awards to young children.
Her judgment stresses that while the principle may be sound, its application demands careful evidential underpinning — and these evidential challenges might influence the quantum ultimately awarded.
Wider Review of the Basis for Lost Years Claims ?
Although not formally revisiting the groundwork of Pickett, the Supreme Court’s majority judgment endorsed comments suggesting that the legal basis for lost years damages — whether they represent compensation for non-receipt of future economic benefits or diminution in earning capacity as a capital asset — is ripe for clarification. The Court noted that this conceptual issue, and the methodology for assessing such damages, was not fully argued and should be addressed in due course.
This invitation opens the door for future litigation or perhaps legislative reform.
Practical Steps for Lawyers, Brokers and Insurers
The CCC decision will reverberate across clinical negligence practice and insurance both in the NHS and independent sector. Key steps for stakeholders include:
1. Reviewing Existing and Ongoing Cases
• Firms handling catastrophic birth injury claims should reassess whether lost years damages can now be pursued or revisited in ongoing negotiations and settlements. Cases that may have been put on hold pending the judgment will now need to be revisited. Insurers should be alerted to potential exposures in cases where life expectancy has been shortened.
2. Adjusting Valuation Models
• Experts, lawyers and counsel must revisit past valuation models for claims involving children with reduced life expectancy — updating multiplicand estimates (future income and pensions) and multipliers (Ogden tables) to reflect the availability of lost years compensation.
3. Evidential Preparation
• Claimant lawyers will need to build robust evidential bases for lost years claims, drawing on educational trajectories, family background, labour market projections and pension data. Defendants must develop strategies to challenge speculative assertions while recognising the compensatory framework set by the Supreme Court.
4. Reserving for Increased Exposure
• Insurers should reassess reserves in line with potential increases in awards. Broader supervisory policies on catastrophic birth injury portfolios may need revisiting given the prospect of materially larger damages.
5. Education and Risk Management
• Potentially significantly higher awards for brain injured children is another piece in the claims inflation puzzle that means healthcare organisations should incorporate the evolving legal landscape into their risk management strategies. Enhanced clinical governance and monitoring remain critical.
Conclusion: A New Era for Child Claimants
The Supreme Court’s decision in CCC represents a watershed moment in clinical negligence law: children whose lives are shortened by negligent care are no longer barred from claiming full compensation for the economic loss that flows from those lost years. The judgment rectifies an inconsistency that has disadvantaged child claimants for more than four decades and aligns the law with basic principles of compensation and fairness.
However, the concept of “salary in heaven” is controversial and it remains to be seen whether, and how soon, the Supreme Court’s invitation to clarify is accepted.