Botch eye op payout came too late; Pensioner died before benefiting.

Byline: By LISA HUTCHINSON

A PENSIONER won a two-and-a-half year battle for compensation for a botched eye operation - but died before she had the chance to benefit from the pounds 6,500 payout.

Isabella Johnson, 84, of Byker, was making a claim against Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust for a cataract removal operation that went wrong in January 2005, when she was 81.

Complications during the procedure at the Royal Victoria Infirmary meant Mrs Johnson experienced a posterior capsular tear - a tear of the back part of the lens capsule which disturbs the gel in the eye. She was left with unbalanced vision which she believed was also a result of the wrong strength of lens being implanted.

The compensation claim was also fraught with difficulties - it was due before the courts in January 2009, but since the operation Mrs Johnson had also been diagnosed with lung cancer and would have been incapable of testifying in person.

Her solicitor Angela Kirtley, an associate at law firm Irwin Mitchell, applied for special permission to allow Mrs Johnson to testify under oath from her own home - but the claim was delayed after the application was opposed by the NHS Trust's own solicitors.

The case only made progress after Judge Wood, at Newcastle County Court, stepped in and granted the permission Mrs Johnson sought. The claim was eventually settled out of court, but it came too late and she died on Friday, September 5.

"I was shocked by the Trust's attitude," Ms Kirtley said. "Time was very clearly of the essence here and the process would have been much easier if the Trust had consented. It would have made a difficult situation much less stressful for Mrs Johnson.

"Before her operation, my client was fit and active - she enjoyed dancing, reading and knitting - but since the operation had to curtail all her pasttimes. The way the case was delayed meant the compensation, for her loss of quality of life in the past three and a half years, arrived too late."

Mrs Johnson's son, Mark, said: "It is really disgusting the way the trust has taken so long to settle this case my mother's life was badly affected by the operation, and she was due this compensation three and a half years ago. It was finally settled out of court once she had very little time left to live. She had been planning to refurbish her house and to go on a cruise but now she will never get to enjoy what was rightfully hers."

A Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust spokeswoman said: "An out of court settlement has been paid with regards to this case."