If someone suffers injury as the result of a healthcare interaction and wishes to recover compensation, it was, and in many legal systems remains, axiomatic, that they will have to show the medical practitioner or institution was at fault. So, the way in which a legal system defines and applies this concept is both vitally important to the scope of protection offered by any particular system and an excellent way to understand the particular conceptions of healthcare, expertise and regulation within that system.

In his recent monograph 'The Development of Medical Liability in Germany 1800–1945', Colm McGrath offers an extended analysis of the understanding of medical fault in German law throughout what he reveals to be the key formative period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Far earlier than has been the case in other European systems, German law broke with the central place of medical expertise as decisive of whether a practitioner was at fault. This monograph sets out to discover why and how that was the case. What emerges is a thick explanation of the interaction between internal medical professional development and regulation, the nascent structures of civil liability and the developing technological innovation of medicine. The law in practice emerged from a sustained and deeply entwined relationship between the two realms and is a stark reminder of the importance of seeing the legal rules in their lived context.

We are delighted to be able to host three distinguished discussants from the disciplines of law and medical history, each of whom will speak to the various themes that emerge from the monograph for legal systems generally:

Professor Sir Jonathan Montgomery, Professor of Healthcare Law (UCL) Professor Jonas Knetsch, Professor of Civil and Comparative Law (Jean Monnet University, Saint-Etienne) Professor A-H Maehle, Professor of History of Medicine and Medical Ethics (Durham University)

There will be the chance to ask questions after the panel discussion.

This event is open to the public and everybody is welcome to attend, though everyone must register.

Seats are allocated on a strictly first come, first served basis.

If you find you can no longer attend please cancel your ticket registration, so that someone else can have your place.