Aswini Weereratne KC - Healthcare and Serious Medical Treatment
Year of Silk: 2015; Year of Call: 1986
Chambers and Partners 2022, Band 2 (Court of Protection); Legal 500 2023, Tier 3 (Court of Protection and Community Care), Tier 4 (Inquests and Inquiries)
Aswini Weereratne acts in many cases in which healthcare issues are the principal focus. She has a particular aptitude for and enjoys unpicking medical and scientific issues. As a junior her clinical negligence caseload covered a broad range of areas - surgical mishaps, ante and post-natal care, group actions involving benzodiazepine prescription, and Creutzfeld-Jakob disease - at both High Court and Court of Appeal level. Aswini continues to act in cases concerning allegations of negligence by health and social care professionals, for example, in relation to negligent treatment of her eating disorder leading to post traumatic stress disorder.
A significant part of her practice also concerns claims for common law and human rights breaches against public authorities. The issue of treatment for life threatening conditions (epilepsy, alcoholism and other serious illnesses such as cancer, and treatments needing surgical interventions) has loomed large in her Court of Protection practice. She has dealt with a number of cases concerning end of life care. In one such case she represented an adolescent man with terminal cancer in his brain, learning disability, and complex risk-laden behavioural issues who, at the end stages of his life, wanted to be at home with his family against the advice of social and health services. She has advised specialist NGOs on withdrawal of ventilator support. She also has extensive experience of treatment issues under the MHA and of psychiatric injuries.
She was lead author of the LexisNexis New Law Guide to the Mental Capacity Act 2005; authors included Ulele Burnham. She has recently co-authored (with Sophy Miles and Gemma Daly) chapters on medical treatment of adults without capacity, and children and the Court of Protection in Lewis &Buchan, Clinical Negligence: A Practical Guide published by Bloomsbury in 2019.
Aswini is a Deputy District Judge sitting at the Court of Protection at First Avenue House and also since 2002 sits as a judge of the First-Tier Tribunal (Mental Health). She is the newly appointed Deputy Chair of the Appeals Tribunal at the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. She is a qualified mediator.
Read Aswini's full profile here.
