Court case[1957] 1 WLR 582

Bolam, a voluntary patient at a mental hospital, was given electro-convulsive therapy (ECT). He was not given any relaxant drug, and no manual restraint was used beyond holding his shoulders and supporting his chin; he was not warned of the small risk of fracture. During the treatment he suffered dislocation of both hip joints with fractures of the pelvis. He sued the hospital's management committee for negligence. Expert evidence showed that competent medical opinion was divided: some doctors favoured relaxant drugs or restraint, others thought them unnecessary or more dangerous.

McNair J. directed the jury that where a special skill is involved the test is not the man on the Clapham omnibus but "the standard of the ordinary skilled man exercising and professing to have that special skill". A doctor "is not guilty of negligence if he has acted in accordance with a practice accepted as proper by a responsible body of medical men skilled in that particular art", merely because there is a body of opinion that would take a contrary view. Conversely he cannot obstinately carry on with an old technique contrary to what is substantially the whole of informed medical opinion. Since the practice followed was supported by a responsible body of opinion, and the failure to warn was likewise in accordance with accepted practice, the jury found for the defendants.