Ping Pong pinkie prisoner pay-out trumps mistaken surgery

A convicted criminal in Sweden’s Gavle prison has been awarded compensation after injuring his little finger playing table tennis. The 46-year-old man has received SEK 18,300 after hitting his hand on the edge of the table during a game in 2007.

The Swedish Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency declared that due to the prisoner experiencing injury, pain and scarring, he therefore had the right to financial compensation. The Local revealed that photographic evidence and consultation with doctors were used to aid the Agency’s ruling.

The inmate decided to make a personal injury claim over the incident, after being forced to use a plastic splint for ten weeks for the painful finger which he claimed was swollen and tender. No charges have been made against the table.

Meanwhile, also in Gavle, eastern Sweden, a 70-year-old woman was inadvertently given eyelid surgery after doctors operated on the wrong person. “No one checked to make sure it was the right patient,” said the chief physician Lars Goran Holtby. The hard of hearing septuagenarian mistakenly answered a nurse’s call to the operating theatre where she was informed that she would be having surgery on one of her eyelids after her previous visit to correct cataracts in the other eye. The woman, whose eyelid in question was a touch saggy, happily agreed to the surgery and was by all accounts pleased with the outcome.

The incident has been referred to the Health and Welfare Board. “It’s potentially quite dangerous when patients are mixed up,” said the surgeon.