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22 July 2010 / Nicholas Dobson
Issue: 7427 / Categories: Features , Public
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Let me be the judge

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Was Rose Gibb’s final settlement irrationally generous? Nicholas Dobson reports

When the Court of Appeal on 23 June 2010 looked at the law, facts and circumstances surrounding the severance of Rose Gibb, former chief executive of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, what it saw was quite different from the view taken on 28 April 2009 by Treacy J in the Administrative Court. For while Treacy J had seen the £250K severance settlement as “irrationally generous”, Sedley LJ did not “on its face” consider this to be “outlandish compensation for the arbitrary termination of a career” which Gibb was unlikely to be able to resume or resurrect.(Rose Gibb v Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust [2010] EWCA Civ 678, [2010] All ER (D) 229 (Jun)).

Background

Gibb was dismissed by her employer NHS Trust because of an impending report from the Healthcare Commission which was to be highly critical of trust leadership. The report followed outbreaks in 2006 of the C difficile super bug at hospitals managed by the trust which

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