In this episode of Beyond the Gavel, host Rodney Peyton sits down with John Browne, partner at Hussey Fraser Solicitors in Dublin and a leading expert in catastrophic injury and medical negligence law. John shares how an early sporting career and a personal injury shaped his path into legal practice. He also discusses the realities of high‑stakes litigation, the importance of empathy and integrity, how to meaningfully manage client expectations, and what it takes to mentor the next generation of medical negligence lawyers. This conversation provides real insight into the skills, values and mindset required to succeed in complex medical cases.
Rodney Peynton: 0:00
Hi again, and welcome to Beyond the Gavel.
This is the podcast that ventures deep into the intricate world of personal injury and medical negligence litigation, and I use it to explore the insights and experiences of some of the most distinguished voices in the law today. And I’m your host, Robbie P.
Today, I am privileged to welcome John Brown, partner at Hussey Fraser Solicitors in Dublin. He’s renowned for his extensive experience in catastrophic injury and complex medical negligence cases, and he’s earned a formidable reputation for his meticulous approach and his unwavering commitment to justice. His insights have not only shaped landmark judgments but have also influenced practice across Ireland and even beyond. So today, join us as we look into John’s unique perspective navigating high‑stakes litigation, client advocacy and the ever‑evolving legal landscape in medical negligence. So John, let me welcome you to the program. Thank you so much for coming on today.
John Browne: 0:57
Delighted to be here. Thank you, Rodney.
Rodney Peynton: 0:59
You’re very welcome. John, I think our listeners would like to hear first, you know, your background. Everybody has a unique background of how they got into this. How did you get into the law and then into medical negligence and personal injury?
John Browne: 1:15
So when I left school, I was a talented soccer player, so my plan was, because I was being scouted by a lot of clubs in the UK, my plan was to try and get signed by a team and go to England to play professional football essentially. But I had an interest in law, and I sort of made a plan that I’m going to give it another 12 months, because I had so many clubs watching me and sort of promises of this and that that didn’t actually result in a formal commitment, that I said I would give it another 12 months, and if I don’t get signed, I’m going to go and study law.
And I actually watched a movie I remember as a teenager, Paul Newman – The Verdict – and it’s about a plaintiff malpractice lawyer in Boston. That was actually what inspired me to go into the law. And I just went from there. I gave it that 12 months, and then I went to university to study law.
Rodney Peynton: 2:17
Do you regret that?
John Browne: 2:19
No, I don’t.
Rodney Peynton: 2:21
So what attracted you to the law as a thing in the first place? It’s interesting, people second‑career into it. I mean, we’ve been with Bocelli recently, and, you know, he was a lawyer before he became, you know, a well‑known singer. He trained in the law first. So it seems to be a path that some people do in different guises. So what took you into the law?
John Bowne: 2:43
I had personal experience, and I saw people and family members that were sort of victims of injustices, and, you know, if they didn’t have access to legal people, they weren’t going to be able to do anything about that. And I suppose it was a sense of seeking justice, to be able to get to justice.
Rodney Peynton: 3:04
So that’s where that unwavering commitment came from? That you had personal experience, and really, it was your personal experience that brought you into it. Is that right?
John Bowne: 3:13
Yeah, a little bit, yeah. Just a few things with family members.
Rodney Peynton: 3:16
And was that to do with medical negligence‑type things, or just other things?
John Bowne: 3:23
One personally was, yeah. I had a bad injury from sports, and essentially, I was left with that injury for about eight years until I got a second opinion, and the second surgeon was astonished at what I had been told. He redid it, and then everything was fixed from there.
Rodney Peynton: 3:44
So it really became very personal for you.
John Bowne: 3:46
Yes, yeah, a little. It gave me a great insight. I suppose if you’re an athlete, you get to know injuries and the body, because you have to be very in tune with all that. And whether you like it or not, you’re going to see a lot of physiotherapists and medical people. So that gave me a good background to combine with personal injury and medical negligence, to a degree, because you get to know the ins and outs of the medical side a bit before you actually get into practicing law.
Rodney Peynton: 4:17
And did you have any involvement with law before that or before you decided the medical negligence claim? Had you asked other people in the law before this came up? Or not? Just it went medicine first, then the law?
John Browne 4:30
Yes. So when I did my apprenticeship, my apprenticeship would have taken me up to the start of the millennium. A couple of years. That was general practice. So everything, essentially, in a general practice firm in the city centre of Dublin, across from the Four Courts.
And then when we went to Blackhall Place where we trained, you have to sit beside the same person every day. You’re assigned a seat on the basis of your surname, whatever letter. So in my case, B. And I liked the idea of personal injury from the personal injury cases I had done in general practice. And a friend of mine there tipped me off about a firm that was looking for new solicitors, and I applied, and I started off there.
Rodney Peynton: 5:18
So the relationship was important, somebody who knew you. Obviously they were putting themselves in line, but someone who knew you suggested you do this. Is that right?
John Browne 5:26
That’s exactly it.
Rodney Peynton: 5:29
So there’s something to do with relationships that you build up on your way through, isn’t there?
John Browne 5:30
It’s very important, absolutely. And that person who used to sit beside me tipped me off about a personal injury solicitors firm that was looking for new lawyers, John Schutte and Associates, and I started off there as a personal injury lawyer and a medical negligence lawyer, working in a more junior role, assisting other medical negligence lawyers.
Rodney Peynton: 5:57
Did you have good mentorship there?
John Browne 5:58
I did, very good. My general practice office was a sole practitioner, so it was very hands‑on, and it was intense, because you don’t have the backup. And then when I went to that firm in 2000 – John shiner and Associates – it was a very structured, organised firm. Good mentors, good systems. John himself was a great personal injury lawyer in his day, a great medical negligence lawyer. And he had written books, so they were very good for people who wanted to study law in that area. So he was very structured. I got a great three and a half years of experience in that firm.
Rodney Peynton: 6:42
So what do you say? I mean, a lot of young people now, they don’t want to put in the time. You know that. Maybe that’s great, but I don’t know anybody that’s made it that works nine to five, Monday to Friday. I just don’t know anybody that’s made it to any extent. But I get the impression some of the people coming through expect to sign on and sign off. What’s your advice to them? What has been your experience? And what is your advice to those who want to make it, not just be your average lawyer, but who want to really make it and make an impression? What would be your advice to them, these young people coming through?
John Browne: 7:16
My advice would be, you need to want to do the area of law you get into, to want to work in that area, and you need to work beyond nine to five. You need to expand your bubble if you want to do well.
Rodney Peynton: 7:33
You know it’s very interesting talking… well, you’re in sport. Through some of the people I work with, speaking to a very famous coach in the United States who’s known to stand on the sideline and literally scream in basketball, scream at the players in college basketball. And they pulled him aside and said, look, why do you do that? Because actually, the players loved him.
And the answer was – when a player comes to play college basketball for me, I say to them, listen, what is it you want in life? Well, you know, I’d like to maybe follow the basketball and then I have to have this secondary stream, and I’d want to work, just like you did your soccer and your academia. And he said, so what do you want from me? And they said, well, you know, your coaching and your guidance. And he said, so you want me to coach and mentor you to be the best version of you you can be? And they said, yeah. He said, so whatever I do, if it’s to do with making you the best you can be, whether it’s on the court or in your studies, you’re all right with that? And they said yes. And he said, I do that first, and when I get that agreement from them, I can scream and yell when I need to, and I do it when I need to. Because that’s what they dedicated themselves to, whereas people who just want to be average and left alone, they’re going nowhere.
So what do you find in people coming through your practice? How do you select people that you will take on in your practice, to train and to mentor? Because I know you do a lot of that.
John Browne: 9:11
What we’re looking for is something you touched on earlier. We’re looking for people and why they want to get into law. For example, if someone wants to get in for the prestige, then that’s not something that we’re interested in. If someone wants to get into law to make loads straight away, something you can make quick money in or good money easily, then it’s not someone we’re interested in.
We want people who are interested in their cases and their clients. So we’re looking for personal injury lawyers and medical negligence lawyers who will do the work that clients need to achieve the results for clients.
Rodney Peynton: 9:50
Be a servant leader or a servant lawyer. There’s, you know, not just taking it, but being a servant to the people who come in over your door.
John Browne: 9:58
Quite. It’s important, very important. And you have to listen to your client’s story. It’s very important. You shouldn’t prejudge them. You should listen, think laterally about the story they bring to you. Also very important not to be taken in by the story and consumed by it, because you have to have empathy, but you need to apply your knowledge and give advice to your clients quickly. No matter how much empathy you have, you, of course, need to give them expert advice.
Rodney Peynton: 10:28
Yeah, and you can’t get emotionally involved with them, sympathetic‑wise. But empathy, you’ve got to listen to understand, isn’t that right? Instead of listening to reply. In all forms of life, that is. So, great insight there into how you deal with that. And how do you manage client expectation? I mean, given that and you are empathetic, what do you say to your people about how you manage a client’s expectation?
John Browne: 10:54
Expectations are actually something that should be dealt with in stages. So, particularly for a medical negligence lawyer, the starting point of a case is establishing breach of duty, liability and then causation, and that takes a considerable period of time, perhaps the first year of a case for a medical negligence lawyer. So expectations about damages shouldn’t really be addressed at the start of the case; they shouldn’t be addressed until close to the end of the case.
I find that most clients that we deal with as medical negligence lawyers are not that focused on damages or quantum. They’re focused more on what’s happened to them, how to get better from that, and to know whether they have a right about it – do they have a sustainable case?
That’s how I manage expectations. And we have a team, of course. We also have counsel, two barristers normally in a case, and we often discuss expectations on quantum towards the end of a case. It’s also not possible to advise the client properly in the early stages of a case in relation to quantum, so expectations can only be clear when the values are clear. And that’s quite a while into the case.
Rodney Peynton: 12:17
Yeah. Now we all know that a lot of people are walking over your door with complaints they have. Some of them want to know what’s happened. They want to make a complaint. And a complaint’s not the same as a case in medical negligence. So in that initial phase, how do you decide whether you’re going to make a client a plaintiff or not? I mean, do you take on all comers, or how do you sift out what you’re going to take and what you’re not going to take?
John Browne: 12:42
So, we very quickly decide whether we will open the case or not, and we’ll advise the client as properly and politely as possible. If it’s a complaint, then we advise the client to take that up with the CEO or complaints department of the appropriate hospital or patient liaison body, and we explain why that is the case and that it’s not a case that we can pursue through the courts. The courts do not provide a remedy for that type of situation if it’s only a medical complaint, and they don’t provide damages, and there isn’t actually a forum available.
Rodney Peynton: 13:22
Yeah. And when do you start getting medical opinions? What do you do about that?
John Browne: 13:28
We take up our clients’ medical records. Some clients will come to us with their medical records, but as medical negligence lawyers, we will write to the client and get their written permission to take up their medical records. Once we have all of the records that we need, then we will seek an opinion from that.
Rodney Peynton: 13:50
Do you use screening at all?
John Browne: 13:53
We do use screening, yeah, we do.
We often get limited records from a client. In very sad, tragic cases where someone has died, we will get the autopsy report or post‑mortem report to provide a preliminary opinion. So we do screen cases.
Rodney Peynton: 14:09
And what’s the advantage of that to your client or to your firm?
John Browne: 14:14
The advantage to screening cases is it gives the client a quick response on their query, and from our firm’s point of view, it reduces our outlay on the case in terms of time, cost and expenditure.
Rodney Peynton: 14:29
Yeah, and also the effort, I suppose, that your staff have to put into it, and the constant phone calls – “Has my case come up yet? I talked to you last week.” You know, we’ve all been in that one. So what challenges do you see in the way things are going at the moment with running these cases?
John Browne: 14:49
The Irish legal system evolves over time, and it’s different to when I started. New rules come in, new changes come in, all sorts of challenges.
You know, every now and then a judgment pops up that might impact on a particular area of medical negligence law, which represents a challenge for medical negligence lawyers.
Rodney Peynton: 15:13
Any specific thing come to mind – not, say, talking about a particular case – but a specific situation that came to mind where you find that, you know, the law really was rather grey in the area?
John Browne: 15:25
Well, at the moment, there’s a case which is ongoing, which has been published, so it’s an open case, called Germaine versus Day, which relates to the law of nervous shock in the Irish legal system. And this is a published judgment. It’s not a client of ours, and it has certainly created debate in the legal community about the exact nature of nervous shock, more so for – not for patients – but for the immediate family members of a patient who may be subject to personal injury or medical negligence, and as to whether or not those family members have a right to claim for damages. A whole series of tests has been set down for that,many of which go back 30 years across various judgments. So it certainly has created a lot of debate across the Irish legal community, for medical negligence lawyers in particular, with varying opinions as to the nature or the true impact of that on the ability of the plaintiff.
Rodney Peynton: 16:33
Yeah, it’s in the UK too. It’s all about proximity. I mean, they’ve really defined it. If you end up in hospital in the same condition as you were when you were hit in the road and your relative sees you, that’s fine. But if it’s later on and you’ve been tidied up, it’s different. Or whether you were, you know, the love and connection, the proximity, all that sort of thing. Is that the stuff that they’re talking about now?
John Browne: 16:53
Yes, they’re talking about proximity, of course, which is relevant when you’re dealing with a loved one. Are you even in the country when it happened – things like that. Duty of care – who does that duty of care extend to – and that’s fact‑based on a case‑by‑case basis. So for medical negligence lawyers, the individual facts of your case, for your plaintiff, are so important. You need to apply that to the tests set down in a judgment. That’s so important
for plaintiff lawyers.
Rodney Peynton: 17:29
It’s interesting the way that’s coming up, rather like Montgomery affected Ireland, you know, after the fact. I mean, these changes are occurring and becoming more defined in what’s accepted and what’s not accepted.
So it evolves, which shows the importance of CPD for lawyers, as it is for doctors, obviously, because medicine changes all the time, and it never stays the same. So if we discuss now something that happened 20 years ago, it’s a bit of a problem, because medicine has evolved, and you’re finding the legal system is also evolving, and you’ve been part of that evolution. So tell me, then, in the future, if you were, you know, you’re teaching these young lawyers coming through and things, and if you were to give them one piece of advice from your extensive experience that would help them in these complex cases to be successful in what they’re going to do, what would that advice be?
John Browne: 18:24
The first thing I would say is that you must have empathy. If you don’t have empathy, you shouldn’t be doing those types of cases. And clients have said it to me. Some have sent me emails and they say, “You’re the only person that listened to me.” So they do want to be listened to. You need to listen to their story. You need to consider that story and don’t prejudge them. Listen carefully, think laterally about their story in a legal sense. Can you do something for them? Then you need to be honest with them, and you need to deliver that message with empathy.
Rodney Peynton: 18:57
Yeah, it’s that authenticity and integrity, isn’t it? I mean, you know, on both sides.
John Browne: 19:03
It is key. It is key.
Rodney Peynton: 19:04
And what about relationships with people? I mean, you, I think, were brought up in the beginning on how that relationship helped to form you, and when you went into that. I mean, there’s an old story, you know, a good lawyer has a relationship with the client; an excellent lawyer has a relationship with the court.
You know, and it’s the people you know and who know you, and it’s about your reputation. What do you tell them about their reputation?
John Browne: 19:28
Well, it’s very important to do your business properly. Be very clear and honest with your colleagues, other lawyers. Then they get to know your reputation. Over time, they know how you work. You become comfortable with that.
Integrity is very important because it makes your life easier, because many agreements are made verbally between lawyers – moving cases and adjourning cases. Most of it’s done in correspondence, but not everything has to be. So your reputation is so important. It’s so important.
Rodney Peynton: 19:59
And it’s not really what you think of yourself; it’s what other people think of you when you’re not there. Isn’t that right?
John Browne: 20:04
Absolutely. And then they know that your case will have merit if you brought it, because they know the type of cases you bring.
John Browne: 20:12
Exactly. And I think that’s very important. And it’s not only you going into court, but if you bring experts into court, or you take a particular counsel, the court very soon gets an idea about you – whom you put up in front of them, what sort of evidence you put forward, what your counsel does – because it’s the people you select that run into the court.
It doesn’t take long for the bench to start to understand who you are, what you are, and whether you are who you say you are. It’s all about integrity, isn’t it?
John Browne 20:41
It’s very important. It goes back to the point you made, Rodney, about mentoring. I mean, I’ve had mentors. I’ve had barristers, some of whom, sadly, are not with us anymore, some of whom are judges. I’ve learned so much from them, not just legally, but about everything else – how they do their business, how they speak to people, what you do in certain situations. And mentoring, learning – mentoring, learning, relationships – it’s every day. Every day you should be building on that and learning.
Rodney Peynton 21:09
Well, thank you for that. Well, there you have it, folks. I mean, I think you’d agree that John, I mean, he’s gone over a lot of stuff there and some very, very important messages coming out about your relationships, about keeping up with your law, about being empathetic. And I think, John, I want to thank you very much for today. The insights you’ve given our listeners have been priceless. Thank you so much.
John Browne
Thank you, Rodney. Take care. My pleasure.
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