PI Brief Update

No Common-Law Duty of Care Owed by the GMC to a Doctor Under Investigation - Maia Cohen, Temple Garden Chambers

26/09/26. Suresh and Others v General Medical Council [2026] EWCA Civ 955.

The Court of Appeal has upheld the decision of the High Court to strike out a claim in negligence brought against the General Medical Council (GMC) by the family of Dr Sridharan Suresh, who died by suicide on 2 May 2018 after being notified by the GMC that it had opened an investigation into his fitness to practise.

The decision turned on the nature of the GMC's statutory regulatory functions and the established principles governing negligence claims against public authorities engaged in investigative functions.

The High Court Decision

The Claimants brought a claim in negligence against the GMC, alleging that its acts or omissions concerning the notification of the fitness to practise investigation had caused or contributed to Dr Suresh’s death and that such harm was foreseeable. The Claimants argued that the GMC owed Dr Suresh as a registrant a duty:

• to take all reasonable care to avoid acts/omissions which might foreseeably cause him psychiatric injury; and
• to take all reasonably practicable steps to avoid/minimise the risk of psychiatric injury to him.

The GMC made an application to strike out the claim pursuant to CPR 3.4 or summarily dismiss the claim under CPR 24.3, on the basis that it was bound to fail because:

• the GMC did not owe a common law duty of care to individual doctors under investigation
• the pleaded facts and evidence taken at their highest were not capable of establishing that Dr Suresh’s suicide was reasonably foreseeable.

The Judge held that the GMC did not owe Dr Suresh a duty in these circumstances and made the order to strike out. He noted that the foreseeability issue, considered independently, would have been one for trial.

The Judge accepted that while Robinson established that generally public bodies, like private individuals, do not owe individuals the benefit of protecting them from harm, the GMC’s positive act of sending Dr Suresh the notification of the investigation could give rise to liability by reason of having “made matters worse”.

However, the judge noted that under Rule 7 of the GMC (Fitness to Practise) Rules 2004, the GMC was required to write to the practitioner as soon as reasonably practical after a referral for an allegation for consideration to inform him of such.

Moreover, the GMC’s “overarching statutory objective” in exercising their functions, as set out in s1(1A) of the Medical Act 1983, is the protection of the public. The judge held that recognising a duty towards those who are subject to an investigation would risk giving rise to clear conflict with the interests of those whom the GMC is required to protect and therefore would be incompatible with the statutory scheme which the GMC were obliged to operate.

Appeal

The Claimants appealed, arguing the judge incorrectly found that a duty of care owed by the GMC in carrying out a positive act would be inconsistent with the GMC’s statutory functions, and that the judge wrongly distinguished, rather than followed, Robinson. The Claimants argued for the finding of a narrower duty, confined to taking reasonable care for the welfare of the registrant in how the investigation was communicated.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal. It acknowledged that strike-out was a stark measure but maintained that this was an area of law in which the governing legal principles have become settled. 

Upon review of pre-Robinson cases, it held that the absence of a duty of care owed by police or prosecutors to persons under investigation had been firmly established.

Lord Bean referenced Lord Bridge’s judgment in Calveley v Chief Constable of the Merseyside Police & Others [1989] AC 1228, where he stated at [1238F-1239A]“it would plainly be contrary to public policy, in my opinion, to prejudice the fearless and efficient discharge by police officers of their vitally important public duty of investigating crime by requiring them to act under the shadow of a potential action for damages for negligence by the suspect”.

Such a principle was subsequently affirmed in Elguzouli-Daf v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [1995] QB 335 and SXH v Crown Prosecution Service [2017] 1 WLR 1401, in which Lord Toulson JSC said "The duty of the CPS is to the public, not to the victim or to the suspect, who have separate interests. To recognise a duty of care towards victims or suspects or both, would put the CPS in positions of potential conflict, and would also open the door to collateral interlocutory civil proceedings and trials, which would not be conducive to the best operation of the criminal justice system”.

Moving onto contemplate Robinson, Bean LJ held that Robinson did not displace the principle that the police and prosecutors do not owe a duty of care to suspects, witnesses or victims in the investigation and prosecution of crime. The facts of Robinson could be differentiated from these earlier authorities as it was a claim for direct physical injury, of the kind that we all as private individuals as do public authorities owe passers by a duty to take reasonable care to avoid.

In considering the relevance of the statutory context, Bean LJ held that there was no legal obligation, in every case where a public body with statutory duties is sued for negligence, to carry out an artificial two-stage process beginning with consideration of what the position would have been at common law regarding the duty owed by a hypothetical regulator before going on to ask whether the statute excludes the liability which would otherwise arise.

Bean LJ held that the general principles of negligence regarding an investigation conducted by public authorities, applied in the statutory context in which the GMC operates and its overarching obligations, led to the conclusion that no duty arose. The High Court was correct to strike out the claim on this basis.

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