Events | 2010.02.14
John Prevett obituary
Actuary who played a key role in securing just compensation for thalidomide victims
The actuary John Prevett, who has died aged 76, had just the detached manner his profession cultivates. Its eminent members join the Gallio Club in London, which Prevett liked for taking the name of the cool Roman judge who told Saint Paul and the orthodox Jews as they traded passionate denunciations: "I care for none of these things." But his detachment was a professional discipline. There was also deep humanitarian emotion, and by sustaining balance, he brought very practical gains to British society.
It was Prevett who began the half-century struggle to compensate the victims of thalidomide, the drug prescribed to hundreds of women in the UK in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a remedy for morning sickness and which was subsequently found to cause birth defects. As Prevett\'s life closed last month, the government produced its long-overdue apology for the cruel blunder made when Enoch Powell was secretary of state for health. By blocking investigation into a unique public-health disaster, Powell led respectable opinion to fancy that the drug\'s makers owed nothing to the children it afflicted.
Powell was a sensitive man: intellectually distinguished; enemy of the hangman; author of a famous denunciation of British atrocities in Kenya. His decision on thalidomide seems bizarre: except that he was a passionate ideologist, then enthralled by FA von Hayek\'s theory that public regulation of private industry must ruin civilisation. Powell let passion defeat reality. But Prevett – who never did – restored order eventually.
Though Prevett\'s work now shows everywhere in compensation law, initially the going was rough. Lawyers were appointed to represent the victims of thalidomide, but their sole sound idea was having Prevett calculate the costs of existence for infants deprived of limbs. The negligence case they presented against thalidomide\'s promoters – the Distillers whisky combine – was crackpot science, easy for the defence to dismiss. In seeming generosity, Distillers conceded 40% liability, then – having garnered much approval from the bench and other high places – used pitiless legalism to make any award 40% of nothing substantial. Prevett was their chief target.
Nerve was needed in 1969 for an actuary to give evidence on "quantum": to impose precision on a process which at the time lacked "any mathematical, actuarial, statistical or other scientific basis". The Law Commission had used these words, so some judges defended envelope-back methodology the more irrationally. Prevett argued that there had to be a scientific approach to restitutio in integrum , putting the children back in the financial position which would have prevailed had they not suffered the effects of thalidomide.
Two children were test cases: one armless, one quadriplegic. With tax and inflation, Prevett calculated that the first would need a £60,429 award to have prospects of decent existence and the second £106,766. Looking back, excess is not apparent.
But counsel for Distillers – and Mr Justice Hinchcliffe, presiding – said that the government intended to control inflation, so no allowance for inflation could be made. Also, while admitting that neither child could expect normal earnings, which therefore would need to be replaced by investment income from any award, they argued that account must be taken of taxes that would have been paid on the future earnings lost but, insanely, no allowance could be made for tax on the investment income replacing such earnings.
Furthermore, said counsel, Prevett had not allowed that a thalidomide victim, if born normal, might be of such type as to ignore "the chore of earning a living". And anyway how long a living? Prevett\'s tables, said counsel, cited averages. And: "You would agree, would you not, that no one ever is the precise average?" Prevett doubted such reasoning could be helpful. "Never mind whether it is a helpful line of reasoning," said counsel. "I want the facts."
This later became an infamous specimen of barrister\'s logic-chopping, but the media then cared little for details of compensation law. Indeed, when unreason had cut the quadriplegic award to £24,000 and the armless one to £5,600, Distillers got more praise for good citizenship. Prevett had been ignored, and many lawyers thought he would not further challenge "the traditional approach" (as Hinchcliffe described it). But he did. After additional research, he wrote in the Modern Law Review (spring 1972) a calm analysis of the brutal pantomime that Hinchcliffe had supervised. He used the thalidomide case to demolish the fantasy of innumerate justice (as it demolished prospects of Powell\'s experiment with unregulated pharmacology being rerun).
And this Review work gave indispensable aid to the wider investigation which broke Distillers\' defence and brought serious money to the victims (middle-aged today). At the Sunday Times, it had been realised that if real evidence replaced pseudo-science, then Distillers\' guilt was plain. Assertions that thalidomide had been tested by the best science of its day – endorsed by Powell\'s ministry, and by pundit legions – were false. The developers had been reckless: the case against them was devastating. But the paper was gagged.
Contempt-of-court rulings enabled Distillers to ban any reporting of thalidomide\'s scientific history. The case must be discussed only in secret, between lawyers: if not, their offered parsimony would be withdrawn. The victims\' own lawyers acquiesced in secrecy, and recommended immediate, final acceptance. But the Review material provided escape from a nightmare Franz Kafka might have devised. On the risky argument that contempt rules could not prevent discussion of compensation, the Sunday Times turned Prevett\'s expert analysis into three broadsheet pages which let any sensible adult see exactly what was being imposed under appearance of law. Public outrage forced a pause: indeed Distillers felt compelled, in reluctant steps, to raise their £3.5m compensation fund. Within weeks it approached £12m – still insufficient to Prevett.
The Sunday Times gained time to refine the negligence case: but it remained unpublishable, and the children\'s lawyers unmoved. Then fortune switched sides: senior counsel mounted the bench, and James Stocker QC, taking over, exhibited an open mind. He studied the Sunday Times material – still in secret – and told the thalidomide families there was new evidence, and – at last – that their case justified holding out for more.
Stocker, later Mr Justice Stocker, knew these battered families could scarcely face a courtroom battle, but saw that Distillers might fear it more. Negotiations stayed confidential, but grew more confident: Stocker settled for £21m. And Prevett had made his point. He was appointed OBE in 1974.
It was not the sole drama in his outwardly undramatic life. Prevett was the son of the stationmaster at Redhill, Surrey. Evidence of his mathematical ability at John Ruskin grammar school, Croydon, produced university offers, but Prevett had already decided to become an actuary, qualifying in five years instead of the usual seven.
As a partner in Bacon & Woodrow, he was a national authority on pensions, and the profession\'s leading and most experienced expert in court on quantifying financial loss in cases of fatal accident or personal injury. He was also the longest serving tax commissioner for the Inland Revenue.
Privately, he was one of the City\'s not insignificant radical community. Again, the key was impregnable professionalism co-existing with Christian socialism, and his long-running cause was resistance to South Africa\'s apartheid regime. For 12 years, he discreetly chaired the Canon Collins Trust, which expertly countervailed the regime\'s attempts to prevent money reaching southern Africa for the education of anti-apartheid activists. Jonathan Bloch, the current chairman, calls him "one of the unsung heroes" of the victory over apartheid. But Prevett did not expect to be sung for it: or for his many other charities, or his decades of work in local government (though he was delighted to become honorary alderman of Reigate and Banstead).
He is survived by his wife, Joy, his twin brother Peter, his sons David and Steven, and six grandchildren.
Harold Evans writes: John Prevett was an innately modest revolutionary. Three decades after our first encounter during the Sunday Times thalidomide campaign, I called him up in the UK from New York. I was writing my autobiography (My Paper Chase) and wanted to check my memories and tell him of an impending visit to London where I\'d meet the new campaigners – the thalidomiders themselves.
I don\'t think even then he really appreciated just how crucial his testimony had been in the case for rejecting the damages offered by Distillers, just as I hadn\'t realised in the 1970s that he had made a habit of killing monsters. Of his courtroom testimony on the derisory settlement approved in 1969, he said: "The judge seemed to be asleep during the long time I was cross-examined by the Distillers lawyer." We had already criticised those court settlements for the victims, but in mild language and without any noticeable effect on anyone, including the victims\' legal counsel. Only when Bruce Page read and developed an article by Prevett in the Modern Law Review did we really get going in the campaign; Prevett\'s analysis exposed the ignorant brutality of the settlements the court had approved.
But his influence is much wider. Actuarial testimony was often discounted by the courts. Prevett\' s essays and his evidence in this and other cases dramatised the injustice inherent in awarding damages by guesswork.
• John Henry Prevett, actuary, born 6 April 1933; died 30 January 2010
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/feb/14/john-prevett-obituary
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