Former Everton trainee loses case against club over knee injury
A promising young footballer whose hopes of a professional career with Everton were crushed by catastrophic knee injuries has lost his damages action against the club.
James Hall began a two-year scholarship with the Premier League side in July 2005 at their academy in Netherton.
A month later, through no fault of his own, the 16-year-old midfielder sustained a painful twisting injury of his left knee during a training game.
He suffered a ruptured ligament and a torn cartilage which led to surgery and a rehabilitation programme, but was left with a knee which was unfit to withstand the rigours of a professional football career, said Mr Justice King sitting at London’s High Court.
Mr Hall, now 24, brought negligence proceedings against Jonathan Thomas, a GP acting as the club doctor, head academy physiotherapist Stephen Hardwick and Everton Football Club Company Ltd.
The judge said that, sympathetic though any court must be to what had befallen Mr Hall at such a young age, he found it impossible to hold that he had established any breach of duty against Mr Hardwick and thus the club.
Mr Hall had not established that the care provided to him during rehabilitation fell below the standard of the reasonably competent physiotherapist.
He went on to rule that the admitted negligence of Dr Thomas in causing a two-day delay in September 2007 in the instigation of proper treatment for an infection had caused 50% of the septic arthritis-induced damage to Mr Hall’s knee, but the exact effect of that damage upon Mr Hall would be assessed at a further hearing on the amount of any compensation.
The judge added that, without Dr Thomas’s negligence, Mr Hall would still have had diminished cartilage function and significant degenerative changes to his knee which were likely to have deprived him of any prospects of a meaningful professional career in football.
