The case
During a holiday with her husband in France in 2005, a middle-aged woman suddenly develops a paralyzed left arm, a crooked face and a speech impediment. In a French hospital it turns out that she has had a cerebral infarction. After returning home, she is treated at the Isala hospital in Zwolle, where further examination takes place.
The treating neurologist informs the GP that he has found no evidence of multiple sclerosis (MS). A relative of the woman’s husband, a neuroradiologist at another hospital, sees abnormalities consistent with that disease. Afterwards, the woman is left with various complaints and the uncertainty as to whether she does not have MS after all.
In 2010, another neurologist from Isala examined her. This also rules out MS.
The woman was only diagnosed with MS in 2016. There is no answer to the question why the diagnosis was not made earlier and various procedures followed in the years that followed.
Ultimately, the court ruled that only the first neurologist was at fault. The woman dies during the appeal proceedings. The heirs continue the business. The court concludes in an interim judgment that both neurologists at Isala have culpably failed in the treatment, including by ruling out MS, and asks the heirs to substantiate the damage. The court will consider that damage.
The ruling: Isala must reimburse more than 16,000 euros
The woman claimed more than 388,000 euros, largely for non-material damage due to physical and psychological injuries. The rest concerns costs for care and domestic help at home, extra scans and (advisory) reports from experts for disciplinary and legal cases.
The court explains in the final judgment that liability in itself does not provide a right to compensation. That depends on whether there is sufficient causal link between errors and damage. The most important question: what would have happened if the neurologists had not ruled out MS?
The court immediately saw a problem in this: for each damage item, the woman’s lawyer should have substantiated in concrete terms how this was the result of the errors. That did not happen, even though the court had expressly requested it in the interim judgment. That is why the court rejects most items.
However, it does award all costs for additional scans and a small portion of damages, together more than 16,000 euros. Even without concrete substantiation, according to the court, it is plausible that the mistakes that were made forced the woman to have additional scans made and that they caused her “extra stress, loss of enjoyment of life, depressive feelings, processing problems and a loss of confidence in doctors or hospitals”.
The commentary
It does not happen very often that a hospital is liable for two doctors according to the judge, according to lawyer Martin de Witte of Forza Personal Injury Lawyers. “Here, the second neurologist, who only treated the patient five years later, may have suffered from tunnel vision.”
Yet the surviving relatives do not get nearly what the woman demanded. De Witte: “It is quite sad, because she may have thought that she would receive tons of compensation once liability was established. But the way in which the proceedings were conducted here makes the outcome understandable.”
Anyone claiming compensation in such a procedure must prove – and often prove – that the damage was caused by the medical error. In this case the error is mainly in excluding MS. According to De Witte, a lawyer in such a process must do everything to get the facts out that can support his or her views. That didn’t happen here. Without concrete substantiation or evidence you cannot do much.
De Witte: “It is not clear why care and domestic help at home are the result of the mistakes made. The same applies to non-material damage, insofar as it concerns physical injury.”
The woman’s lawyer had not sufficiently substantiated that the disease would have been less serious if the doctors had not ruled out MS. De Witte: “With MS this is extra difficult to demonstrate, because the disease cannot be cured, but general references will not get you there.”
So there are quite a few legal hoops that a patient or survivor has to go through. There are also financial consequences, because someone has to incur costs in advance for a (medical) expert, without knowing what the outcome of the procedure will be. This may explain, according to De Witte, why the number of claims due to medical damage has been relatively low for years. According to him, the result is that not all medical errors are properly identified and investigated. De Witte: “Hospitals must take an active role in this, so that they can learn from mistakes.”
Details statement Arnhem-Leeuwarden Court of Appeal, May 19, 2026, ECLI:NL:GHARL:2026:3107