Last Updated On 25th February 2025. This guide whether claims could be made if solicitors sent the wrong medical records to another party. The UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) considers health data to be a sensitive category of personal data, and the data has special protections. A law firm could breach your data protection rights by disclosing the data without a lawful basis to do so. In this case, you could claim compensation.
The Information Commissioner’s Office is the regulatory body that upholds the data rights of data subjects. Data subject is the term for a natural person to whom personal data relates.
Please contact us today to see if you can claim compensation for a medical records data breach by a solicitor. An advisor will speak to you about your circumstances. If you have sufficient evidence to support your claim, you could work with one of our data breach solicitors to get you the compensation you deserve.
Please make your enquiry about claiming if solicitors sent the wrong medical records today:
- Call us today on 0800 073 8804
- Contact us online to see if you can claim
- Use our advice widget to ask us a question
Select A Section
- What Are Medical Data Breaches By Solicitors?
- What Records Could Be Involved?
- How Medical Records Could Be Missent
- Can You Claim If Solicitors Sent The Wrong Medical Records?
- Solicitors Sent The Wrong Medical Records; What Could I Claim?
- Talk To Us About No Win No Fee Agreements
What Are Medical Data Breaches By Solicitors?
A data breach is a kind of security incident that affects the confidentiality, integrity or availability of personal data. Personal data is any information that has been processed and that can be used to identify someone, either alone or when it’s put together with other information.
Solicitors may need to have access to your medical records when they handle personal injury claims. Furthermore, these medical records might need to be sent elsewhere, such as to a third party.
If your solicitor sent your medical records to the defendant in another case, this would be considered a data breach. If this caused you harm, then you may be entitled to claim compensation.
The UK GDPR requires that data controllers and processors adhere to data protection law in protecting personal data. A data controller decides how and why personal data is processed, whereas a processor can process personal data on their behalf. However, both must adhere to data protection laws.
Solicitors Sent The Wrong Medical Records – Did They Break The Law?
Under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK GDPR, businesses must protect the data they process. This means that they must have a lawful basis for processing personal data.
Furthermore, organisations that are responsible for processing personal data need to adhere to the key principles that should lie at the heart of data processing. They are as follows:
- Purpose limitation
- Accuracy
- Storage limitation
- Integrity and confidentiality
- Data minimisation
- Accountability
- Lawfulness, fairness and transparency
If an organisation fails to adhere to the above, then they are in breach of data protection law. However, you cannot claim just because the data controller or processor did not adhere to these principles. A data breach must have occurred that exposed your personal data and caused you harm in order to claim.
For more information on claiming if solicitors sent the wrong medical records out, then speak with a member of our team today.
What Medical Records Could Be Involved?
Data concerning your health is considered special category data. This is data that requires special protection because of its sensitive nature.
A data breach by a solicitor may expose the following medical information:
- Information about a current health condition
- Details of past health conditions
- The results of a medical assessment carried out as part of a claim
- Details of treatments that the data subject is undergoing
If solicitors sent the wrong medical records when working on a claim, then this could be harmful to the data subject. They could experience mental injuries at the thought of their sensitive data being shared with unauthorised parties. Furthermore, they could be affected financially.
For free legal advice about making this kind of claim, speak with an advisor today.
How Could Medical Records Be Missent?
Below, we have included some examples of how a solicitor medical data breach could occur:
- A solicitor sends a client’s medical data to the wrong email address, and the person it was sent to does not have authorisation to view this information
- The solicitor can post the medical records to the wrong address.
- A solicitors firm allows an employee unauthorised access to medical records because of poor password management.
- An email data breach can happen if the solicitor attaches the wrong medical records.
- A solicitor can share the wrong medical records with a third party by post.
This is not an exhaustive list of the ways that personal data could be breached. If you would like to know whether you have a valid case for claiming if solicitors sent the wrong medical records, speak with a member of our team today.
Can You Claim If Solicitors Sent The Wrong Medical Records?
If the wrongful conduct of a solicitor was responsible for personal data relating to your medical records being exposed, you could be entitled to claim compensation. To make a successful claim, you will need evidence to prove the solicitor’s firm breached your data because it failed to comply with data protection regulations.
You also need to show that you experienced financial and/or emotional harm because of the breach. If a breach occurred but it did not affect you in any way, then you’d be unable to pursue compensation.
Please call Legal Expert to see if you have a valid reason to claim. If you do, you could be connected with one of our lawyers to work on your case.
Solicitors Sent The Wrong Medical Records; What Could I Claim?
There are two types of damage that could be claimed for if a solicitor sent the wrong medical records. These are:
- Material damage: this refers to the financial harm caused by having your personal data exposed. We’ll examine this in more detail below.
- Non-material damage: this is the psychological impact of a personal data breach. This can range from minor distress up to severe post-traumatic stress disorder in the most serious cases.
Solicitors can refer to any professional diagnosis you have received alongside the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG) to determine a potential compensation figure for non-material damage. The JCG publication sets out guideline compensation amounts for various types of harm. We have used the figures for psychological injuries in our table here.
Compensation Table
Please be advised that the top entry is not a JCG figure. This information has been included for guidance purposes only.
Type of Harm Severity Guideline Compensation Amount
Very Severe Psychological Distress With Financial Losses Very Severe Up to £500,000 +
General Psychological Injury Severe (a) £66,920 to £141,240
Moderately Severe (b) £23,270 to £66,920
Moderate (c) £7,150 to £23,270
Less Severe (d) £1,880 to £7,150
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Severe (a) £73,050 to £122,850
Moderately Severe (b) £28,250 to £73,050
Moderate (c) £9,980 to £28,250
Less Severe (d) £4,820 to £9,980
Material Damage In Medical Record Data Breach Cases
If the wrong medical records are sent by a solicitor, there are certain financial losses that could occur. Medical records not only contain health data, but also your name, address and other personal details.
Examples can include:
- Medical costs related to treatment for the psychological distress caused.
- Lost earnings due to time taken off work to recover from that distress.
- Security installations, or relocation costs, if your address has been compromised.
Make sure you retain proof (payslips, medical bills, receipts) as proof of any losses you incur. To get a more personalised idea of what your potential personal data breach claim could be worth, speak to our team today using the contact information below.
Talk To Us About No Win No Fee Agreements
Please contact us if you wish to claim compensation for a data breach by a solicitor. If we can see that you are eligible to claim, we can handle your case on a No Win No Fee basis. A popular form of No Win No Fee agreement that you could be offered is a Conditional Fee Agreement.
When you make a No Win No Fee claim, you will usually not have to pay a solicitors fee upfront in order for them to start working on your claim or as it progresses. Furthermore, you generally do not pay your lawyer for their services if your claim is not a success.
You will pay a success fee if you win your No Win No Fee data breach claim. The success fee is legally capped, so most of the compensation payment goes directly to you.
To enquire about claiming data breach compensation after solicitors sent the wrong medical records, please contact us today:
- Call Legal Expert on 0800 073 8804
- Contact us online to request a callback
- Use the Live Support widget to talk about your options with an advisor
Further Claims For Breaches Of Personal Data
Below, we have included links to more of our guides that you might find useful:
- Private Healthcare Medical Data Breach Compensation Claims Guide
- A Company Has Misused My Personal Data – Can I Sue?
- What To Do If Your Employer Breaches Your Personal Data
You may also benefit from reading the guides below:
- A guide to consent and processing data from the Information Commissioner’s Office
- How to make a data protection complaint – a UK government guide
We hope this guide has informed you of the effects that can be felt if solicitors sent the wrong medical records and the steps you can take if this has affected you.
Written by Chelache
Edited by Stocks
