Why a 22-year-old Preston man was compensated more than £10,000 after ill-advised dental treatment 'blighted' his teenage years

Thomas Grundy, a 22-year-old groundworker from Preston, has been awarded £10,500 from his former dentist after settling a legal case which claimed poor consultation resulted in years of inappropriate private treatment that disrupted Mr Grundy’s teenage years. Mr Grundy had been a long-term patient of Dr Johnston Jordan at Oasis Dental Care in Beech Drive, Preston. The dentist involved admitted liability.

He said: “He’d treated all of my family and we had never had any issues. When I was 12 my mouth was a mess - there was a lot of overcrowding which caused my teeth to be crooked and I had a large overbite. Dr Jordan proposed orthodontic brace therapy as the best solution. However, he advised I would be unable to get the expensive brace treatment on the NHS until I was 13, by which point my teeth may have moved even more and stopped the treatment being possible. He recommended undergoing the treatment privately with him, saying it would take about 18 months to complete. Initially, my mum hesitated about me having the treatment privately. She was a busy single mum working two jobs and the treatment was expensive. However, she also wanted me to have the best smile I could and we trusted Dr Jordan, so we proceeded with the private treatment.”

Despite Dr Jordan saying the treatment would only last 18 months, four years later, aged 16, Thomas was still undergoing the orthodontic treatment which required a dentist trip nearly every month. It wasn’t until his sister was referred immediately to the NHS by a specialist for the same dental issues that his mother realised Dr Jordan’s advice had been wrong. Thomas said: “I visited a specialist who said I needed teeth taken out and then could be fitted for fixed braces, which would solve my problems. The braces that Dr Jordan had installed were only moving my teeth closer together and not helping with the overcrowding. The specialist also noted a number of issues with my teeth that Dr Jordan had never even acknowledged.”

Just before he turned 18, Mr Grundy underwent four tooth extractions and another dentist fitted his fixed braces, which only came off last year when Mr Grundy was 21. “Once I had the new braces fitted, it felt like a weight had been lifted - it was great that things had finally started progressing and I even looked forward to visiting the orthodontist!” Analysis by the Dental Law Partnership revealed that Dr Jordan had wrongly advised Mr Grundy and his mother that they wouldn’t qualify for the NHS treatment, and that he had failed to identify a number of issues within Mr Grundy’s mouth.

Mr Grundy recalled the immense strain the experience with Dr Jordan had put his family under. “It’s a dream come true that all the years of dental issues are over. For my mum, the whole situation was unbelievably stressful and sometimes reduced her to tears - not only did she have to find the money to cover the treatment but she also had to regularly take time off work to take me to all of these appointments over the years that ultimately didn’t improve my teeth at all. He said: “For me, it was horrible to have to undergo so much treatment for so many years, particularly when Dr Jordan had promised my treatment would be sorted before I did my GCSEs. As I’ve gotten older and understood more about what happened, it makes me extremely angry that someone in a position of responsibility cost my mum so much money when it could have been done for free. It felt like a stab in the back when we found out as we had always got on well with Dr Jordan.”

Tim Armitage of the Dental Law Partnership commented: “The distress our client and his mother experienced was completely unnecessary. If the dentist involved had recommended more appropriate procedures rather than encouraging the wrong treatment in the first place, Mr Grundy’s years of dental treatment could have been resolved much faster and at lower cost.” The Dental Law Partnership took on Mr Grundy’s case in 2018. The case was successfully settled in 2022 when Mr Grundy was paid £10,500 in an out of court settlement.