Fred Tyler leaves Balfour+Manson after 45 years

Fred Tyler, a leading medical negligence lawyer and former chairman of Balfour+Manson, has retired after more than 45 years at the firm.

Mr Tyler, who joined Balfour+Manson as an apprentice in 1973 and has spent his entire career with the firm, was chairman between 2005 and 2014 and previously head of Litigation. He became a partner in 1978.

He had a particular interest in brain injury and handled both traumatic brain injury and birth injury cases. He worked with the Edinburgh Headway Group and served as the member for Scotland on the executive committee of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers for eight years.

He was involved in high-profile aviation claims, including the Chinook Disaster and Brent Spar, Cormorant Alpha and Super Puma helicopter crashes in the North Sea, and in the two Nimrod disasters. He also sat on the steering committee for claimants in the Piper Alpha and Lockerbie disasters.

Serving the wider legal profession, Mr Tyler continues to sit as a First-tier Tribunal judge in criminal injuries compensation, social security and pension appeals. He was also a member of the Coulsfield committee which reformed the practice of personal injury in the Court of Session, and sat for many years on the Court of Session Rules Council, as well as the Court of Session Personal Injuries User Group, the Lord President’s Advisory Committee on Fees and the Civil Justice Committee of the Law Society of Scotland.

One of his most celebrated cases was a landmark ruling at the UK Supreme Court in 2015 in favour of Nadine Montgomery. She won £5.25m in an action against Lanarkshire Health Board for her son Sam, who was deprived of oxygen and suffered brain damage leading to cerebral palsy at the time of his birth at Bellshill Maternity Hospital in October 1999. Her case was that that if she had been told of the risks of a natural birth – given her small stature and diabetes – she would probably have chosen a Caesarean section.

Mr Tyler said the case, which was only finally resolved in March 2015, "modernised the law on consent and introduced a patient-focused test to UK law, which allows the patient rather than the medical profession to decide upon the level of risk they wish to take, given all the information available".

Elaine Motion, executive chairman of Balfour+Manson, commented: "Fred has been one of the most significant figures in the field of personal injury and medical negligence in Scottish law for several decades.

"He is a superb, caring and dedicated lawyer who fought his clients’ corner at every stage – and inspired a new generation of personal injury lawyers. The phrase ‘landmark case’ can be overused in the law, but there was no other way to describe the Montgomery judgment."

Mr Tyler responded: "I have thoroughly enjoyed my legal career and have always been motivated by seeing justice done for my clients. When the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Nadine Montgomery, it was a genuinely moving and momentous decision that shifted the balance of the doctor-patient relationship throughout the whole of UK very much in patients’ favour."