Woman gets £522,000 ambulance delay payout

An exhibitions manager at the Natural History Museum who had to leave her job when she developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after she was trapped on a bus has won £522,379 damages.

Ceri Leigh, 50, claimed that her psychiatric damage was caused by the delay in an ambulance arriving after she dislocated her right kneecap and was unable to move from between the seats of the bus she had boarded at Wimbledon station, south west London, on her way home from work in November 2008.

Ms Leigh said she could not sit or stand and was screaming in agony for 50 minutes while well-meaning passengers tried to help and held her down to stop her moving, which added to her feeling of helplessness.

Every minute added to the trauma until she felt “utter despair”, said Mr Justice Globe at London’s High Court.

She felt trapped, was shaking violently, became unable to hold her mind together, remembered “no longer knowing who she was” and went “into a freeze”. She did not recover full function in the knee for about 18 months and became housebound, suffering flashbacks, nightmares and a high level of anxiety and depression. She also began to suffer dissociative seizures.

In February 2011, she was medically retired from the job which she loved — managing the design, installation and conservation of specimens at the museum — and financial pressures drove her and her husband to move to South Wales.

London Ambulance Service NHS Trust admitted there was a negligent delay of 17 minutes in the ambulance arriving but disputed the link with Ms Leigh’s psychiatric problems and the amount of damages.