The case arrives
You send the file. We confirm what's needed and begin the work — quietly, and in confidence.
Risk-free triage.
The full merits assessment on medical negligence claims — you only pay if you want the case.
For Australian law firms
The problem
Knowing whether a claim is worth running
can take more than a day of senior time.
That time comes from your most senior people — and if the case is run and later fails, it is lost entirely.
How it works
Three steps. One clear answer.
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01
You send the case
A secure handover — the file, and what you already know. We take it from there.
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02
We do the assessment
Records, instructions, the merits — and expert medical input where the claim warrants it. Handled end to end.
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03
You decide
A clear view to act on. You only pay if you proceed.
See it work
A real matter, triaged end to end.
Hand us the file. Whitakr reads every page, builds a cited chronology you can open and check against the source, weighs breach and causation, and returns a reasoned merits opinion — in minutes, not weeks.
The assessment, in full
A single case,
examined with care.
Records requested and chased
We request the medical records — and follow them up, again and again, until they are in hand.
Instructions taken
Where it matters, we take the client's account — their words, their recollection, their concerns.
Merits examined
Breach, causation, and the standard of care — weighed with the rigour the question deserves.
The expert panel
Where the claim warrants it, practising doctors test the clinical merits against the standards a court would expect.
The view returned
A clear, considered position on whether the claim is worth running. You review it, and you decide.
What we do
Four kinds of work,
handled in full.
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01
Records
Requested, chased, and assembled. We pursue every record until the file is complete — the part that quietly consumes the most time.
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02
Instructions
Taken from the client where it matters — their account, in their own words — so nothing material is missed.
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03
Merits
Breach, causation, and the standard of care, examined with rigour — the substance of whether a claim will hold.
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04
Expert panel
Where the claim warrants it, the clinical merits are tested with practising doctors, against the standards a court would expect.
What you receive
A clear view.
Yours to act on.
At the end of the assessment you receive a considered position on whether the claim is worth running — the reasoning behind it, and what it rests on. Clear enough to act on at a glance, thorough enough to stand behind.
It arrives ready for your existing process, with no disruption. You retain complete discretion over what happens next.
A considered view
Worth running, or a clear reason not to.
The reasoning, in full
What the view rests on, laid out plainly.
Ready for your process
It drops into how your firm already works.
Your decision, always
You hold conduct. The choice to proceed is yours.
Confidence and confidentiality
Handled with care,
held in confidence.
Sensitive medical records are handled securely and treated in the strictest confidence, in line with Australian privacy law. A client's matter is only ever seen by those who need to see it.
Who we are
Built by lawyers and paralegals.
Decades of medical negligence experience sit behind every assessment. We have worked these files inside Australian firms — we know what the work takes, and what you need to see before taking a case on.
The name
Rogers v Whitaker.
In 1992, the High Court decided Rogers v Whitaker — the case that set the standard of care for Australian medicine. Maree Whitaker, with sight in only one eye, was not warned of a one-in-14,000 risk that surgery could take the sight from her good eye. It did.
The Court held that a patient must be told what a reasonable person in their position would want to know — and that the standard of care is set by the law, not by professional custom. Australian medical negligence law found its spine in that decision. We found our name.
Every claim we assess is tested against that standard: what care was owed, what care was given, and what the gap caused.
Rogers v Whitaker (1992) 175 CLR 479
How we work together
A conversation,
shaped to your firm.
Every engagement begins with a discussion. We shape the work around how your firm runs, and the matters you see most often. There is one principle we hold to.
You pay only
if you proceed.
No cost on a case you decline. When our view is that a claim isn't worth running, that costs you nothing.
Full assessments from $1,000.
That covers the records, the client's instructions, and our considered view on the merits. Pricing is modular — a formal expert opinion isn't always needed to reach a view, and it's available where the claim warrants it. Scope and fee are agreed with your firm before we begin.