A foreign doctor who killed two patients during his first shift as a locum in England has successfully sued the son of one of his victims for calling him “an animal”. Rory Gray, whose father David died in 2008 after being administered a lethal dose of painkiller, has been ordered to pay thousands in legal costs, and faces a further fine of €250,000 if he repeats the insult.
Nigerian-born German Dr Daniel Ubani was working his first shift as a GP locum when he treated Mr Gray at his home in Cambridgeshire. Ubani administered 100mg of diamorphine to the elderly gentleman – ten times the maximum recommended dose – killing his patient. One other patient was later found to have also been killed by Ubani thanks to malpractice during the same shift.
Ruling on Mr Gray’s death, coroner William Morris called the death “gross negligence and manslaughter”. He also found that Ubani was unfamiliar with diamorphine and spoke poor English.
Thanks to the efforts of Mr Gray’s sons, the deaths led to a change in Britain’s regulation of foreign doctors, making it necessary for local Trusts to do safety checks on doctors before allowing them to practice in the UK.
However, despite being struck off the British register by the General Medical Council, Ubani continues to practice in Germany in the field of cosmetic surgery. He also avoided prosecution for manslaughter by British authorities when a German court convicted him of causing death by negligence, handing him a nine-month suspended prison sentence and ordering him to pay €5,000 (£4,400) costs.
In 2010 Mr Grays’s sons Rory and Stuart travelled to a conference that Ubani was speaking at, where they hurled abuse at him, accusing him of being “a charlatan”, “a killer”, and “an animal” before being ejected by security. Ubani has now successfully sued Rory in Bavarian court over the incident. Mr Gray has been ordered to write to Ubani promising never to call him “an animal” again, and has also been instructed to pay three quarters of the costs, expected to be thousands of Euros, the Telegraph has reported.
“It makes me feel physically sick, it is quite hard to believe,” Mr Gray told that paper.
“We went to that conference because we were determined to make things safer for other people – what we have done has changed the laws to make things safer across Europe.”
This is the second time that Ubani has attempted to sue the brothers over the conference incident. In the first ruling his claim for compensation for loss of fees following the incident was thrown out, and he was ordered to pay costs. However, the court ruled that, although the Grays could call him a charlatan and a killer, they could not call him an animal.
Speaking to the Mail in June, when the second case was lodged, Rory said “It is grotesque. He has already taken this to court once and lost everything except the bit about calling him an animal. He wasn’t even aware of that until I produced a transcript from a camcorder recording I made at the conference.
“Four years later his lawyer sent me a letter demanding I promised to pay him a lot of money if I ever called him that again. I am not going to write to him. This is the man who came into my dad’s house and killed him.
“I don’t understand the case and my lawyer can’t understand it either. It’s an abuse of the legal process.
“Ubani’s just trying to extract money from the family of his victim. He seems to think he’s invincible since the German authorities took action that stopped him being prosecuted in the UK.”
Stuart Grey, who works as a GP himself added: “This guy is obviously morally and ethically corrupt.
“He killed my father through gross negligence but obviously he is not happy with that and wants to take my brother to court as he claims he missed a meal and payment for a conference. I consider him to be a weasel.”
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