Until recently, child claimants with a reduced life expectancy had been prevented from recovering pecuniary damages for lost years (the additional years of life the claimant would have enjoyed if they had not been injured by a negligent act) as set out in Croke v Wiseman (1982). The Supreme Court case of CCC v Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (2026) has overruled this approach.
In Croke, it was held that a child whose life expectancy had been shortened by negligence couldn't claim for earnings they would have received beyond their expected date of death, on the basis that such future loss was too speculative to assess. Pickett v British Rail Engineering (1980) and Gammell v Wilson (1982) had established the principle of lost years recovery for adults, but the prevailing view was that Croke prevented that principle from extending to young children.
CCC v Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
The Supreme Court’s judgment in CCC v Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, handed down on 18 February 2026, concerned a claimant who sustained a severe brain injury caused by hypoxia during her birth. The hypoxia was as a result of clinical negligence, which the defendant admitted. The claimant’s life expectancy was agreed to be 29. Her future loss of earnings to the age of 29 was agreed to be £160,000.
The parties also agreed that the High Court trial judge was barred from making an award for pecuniary losses during the lost years (those beyond 29 to an otherwise normal life expectancy) because the Court of Appeal’s decision in Croke precluded such awards where the claimant is a young child. The issue before the Supreme Court, heard by way of a leapfrog appeal from the High Court, was whether the decision in Croke was correct that lost years damages can't be awarded to a young child.
The court’s decision
The majority held that the decision in Croke to refuse to award pecuniary damages for the lost years was incorrect and should be overruled. Lost years damages are, therefore, available to be assessed for child claimants.
The court’s reasoning
The Supreme Court held that Croke couldn't be reconciled with established principles of compensatory damages. The court explained that the reasoning in Croke was based on the fact that a child couldn't recover lost years damages because they had no dependants. The Supreme Court rejected this, confirming at paragraph 49 that “There is no reason of legal principle why a claimant’s ability to obtain an award in respect of his own pecuniary losses should depend on the existence of dependants. The claim for lost years is in respect of the claimant’s own loss, not in respect of anyone else’s, and his or her right to damages is not in any way dependent on how they might be used.”
The court emphasised that the compensatory principle applies equally to children. The aim is to put the claimant in the position they would have been in had the negligence not occurred. That principle applies equally to lost years claims.
The court rejected the argument that lost years damages for children are too speculative to assess. The inability to predict every future eventuality doesn't justify refusing an award altogether. What matters is that a substantial financial loss has been caused by the injury, and the defendant’s conduct shouldn't be allowed to deprive the claimant of fair compensation.
The court acknowledged that assessing the future earnings of a child involves uncertainty, but emphasised that uncertainty is inherent in any award for future earnings, even where the claimant is an adult. The court noted that since Croke it has become common for courts to consider evidence on the claimant’s educational achievements, the average earnings of a category of individuals, and the occupations and attitudes of the claimant’s parents and siblings. Statistical analysis has become more sophisticated, meaning that the assessment of future earnings is no longer so speculative as to justify prohibiting the award altogether.
The current position
Following the judgment in CCC, pecuniary damages for lost years must be considered for all claimants, adult or child, whose life expectancy is reduced by injury caused by negligence. Nevertheless, the extent of any recovery will remain highly fact sensitive.
What this means for defendants, clinicians, and insurers
The decision is likely to increase damages in severe paediatric injury cases. Where there is sufficient evidence, lost years claims could span from the child’s calculated life expectancy to their life expectancy had they not sustained injury. This may represent substantial additional exposure. By way of example, if a claimant’s notional average salary was £40,000 per year and their life expectancy after sustaining injury was 30, but they would otherwise have worked until they were 60, their pecuniary damages for lost years would total £1.2 million.
Quantum assessments may now require a closer analysis of family education and employment history, socio-economic background and national earnings data where lost years are concerned. Defendants should expect claimant experts to rely more heavily on statistical modelling when projecting future earnings and be ready to critically assess and challenge those where appropriate, for example ensuring appropriate contingencies are accounted for.
The assessment of damages in child cases can now extend across an entire working lifetime, meaning accurate clinical and factual record keeping will be critical in the assessment of life expectancy. It will become all the more important for medicolegal experts to opine, robustly, on their assessment of life expectancy and the reasons for that. Relying on national averages is unlikely to be realistic for a significant number of clinical negligence claimants given the commonality health issues that would exist ‘but for’ any alleged negligence.
Closing remarks on Pickett
Although the court overruled Croke, it was suggested that the case of Pickett may require closer examination, if the opportunity to consider the decision further arises in a future case. As Lord Burrows notes, the decision in CCC expands the scope of the lost years damages. This type of award remains controversial because it goes against the normal principle that there can be no loss to the claimant suffered after the claimant’s death. In addition, Pickett may be considered further to provide greater certainty about whether lost years damages should be understood to compensate the claimant personally, or whether a mechanism designed to compensate dependants should instead be adopted. If Pickett were reconsidered, it could reshape the law on lost years damages more broadly than CCC, so developments in this area should be watched closely.
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