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Dr C.G. Gopakumar Takes Fight to Court of Appeal The Court of Appeal's Civil Division has granted Dr C. G. Gopakumar permssion to appeal against the High Court's decision to uphold a finding by the General Medical Council. Dr C.G. Gopakumar, a senior General Practioner with an unblemished career spanning 36 years (admitted by the GMC) found himself facing a General Medical Council Fitness To Practise hearing in 2005. This followed two patient complaints made 17 months apart. In the first complaint, the local Primary Care Trust liased with thr GMC and closed the complaint. We will examine the second, complex and bizarre complaint in a forthcoming article. The BBC reported "A Leeds doctor broke down in tears at a medical tribunal as he denied trying to take advantage of two female patients". The 65-year-old GP denied a charge of serious professional misconduct in August 2005. The GMC’s Fitness to Practise Panel (FPP) found him guilty of serious professional misconduct at Hunslet Health Centre in Leeds and erased his name from the medical register. The GP has continued to fight to clear his name. At the hearing in August 2005, he stated "To be labelled in this way after all these years of work at this age, and to be brought before this committee is terrible". This was the initial appeal judgment at the High Court. Other doctors woud have given up at this stage but undeterred Dr C . G. Gopakumar continued spend many nights reading many law books to find the answer to his case. Determined to clear his name Dr C . G. Gopakumar continued to seek legal representation after previously being failed by the Medical Defence Union. Recently, the Lords at London’s Civil Appeal Court gave Dr Gopakumar, 67, permission to appeal the decision – after hearing the Leeds woman – known as Miss B – who made the complaint against him had a history of drug abuse. A recent article in the Yorkshire Evening Post stated "Barrister, Ian Pennock, for Dr Gopakumar, said that, given the woman’s history, the panel should not have been given a direction by its legal advisers that “she was of good character and that her word was as good as his." The Legal Assessor in this case was His Honour John Townend ( Appointed by the GMC in 2002). Mr Pennock said that, as well as receiving a police caution after she was a passenger in a stolen vehicle, Miss B’s medical records revealed she had used heroin. "That clearly makes the decision unsafe,” he told the Appeal Court. Lord Justice Waller and Lord Justice Rix yesterday granted him permission to appeal after hearing that Miss B’s drug issues had not been put before the judge. The matters which led up to the referral to the General Medical Council were complex. Due to legal reasons more details of this post Shipman witch-hunt of doctors by two PCTs ( Primary Care Trusts) and their misleading evidence submitted to the General Medical Council cannot be disclosed until all legal processes are over. More details of the GMC's use of medical expert who allegedly may have misled the panel will also be presented on this website in the future. The exact details of this case will clearly reveal that the present regulatory and diciplinary processess of the GMC are unsafe, inconsistent and full of pitfalls. This was clearly presented by Dame Janet Smith in her lecture to the Clinical Disputes Forum on 12th May 2005 (Clinical Risk (2006) 12, 96-101).
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