Imogen Goold

EXPERIENCE & EXPERTISE

Imogen joined Chambers as a tenant upon successful completion of her pupillage in October 2024. She is developing a busy clinical negligence, Court of Protection and inquest practice. Imogen was also included on the Pro Bono Recognition Lists for 2025 and 2026.

She combines practice with her ongoing academic research, which currently focuses on secondary victim claims for pure psychiatric injuries, and decision-making on behalf of children. She is also working on a historical study of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990.

Court of Protection

Imogen is developing a practice in Court of Protection work, particularly on issues concerning mental capacity, best interests and mental health law. She acts for local authorities, the Official Solicitor, accredited legal representatives, and families, in the Court of Protection.

Her recent instructions include:

• Acting for the family pro bono in a case involving an adult child lacking capacity and contested care arrangements;
• Acting for the Official Solicitor in proceedings in which it was determined P had capacity to marry and engage in sexual relations, which involved nuanced issues in relation to capacity;
• Acting for the local authority in a serious medical treatment case concerning a child in care, in which there were parallel care proceedings that required careful navigation;
• Advised hospital in a serious medical treatment case concerning transition of a man with Autism Spectrum Condition to hospital for treatment under sedation;
• Ongoing instructions from the Official Solicitor in contested proceedings relating to contact during P’s end of life care.

Cases and work of note

In the matter of AA  & Ors v The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority & Ors  [2026] EWHC 317 (Fam), Morgan J

Instructed on behalf of 15 Claimants who are patients whose embryos or gametes are stored in a number of Fertility Clinics across the UK, but where their consent for the renewal of such storage, in accordance with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, as amended by the Health and Care Act 2002, had not been given, in many cases (it was submitted) due to circumstances beyond their control. As the HFEA framework is silent on how errors or mitigating circumstances should be dealt with, and where the patients were alive and continued to consent, it was argued that the court should use its interpretive powers under section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998 to read into the HFEA framework an ability to consent out of time, in order to avoid an infringement of the Article 8 ECHR rights of each patient. It is understood that this is the first case where the court has considered the HFEA legislative provisions for multiple patients at one time. Imogen was led by Emma Sutton KC. All, bar one, of the applications was granted. Please see here for the judgment and here for press commentary.

Inquests

Imogen has appeared on behalf of a range of Interested Persons, including families and NHS Trusts in pre-inquest review hearings and inquests. She acted for the family in inquest into the death of Malika Hibu, in which the Coroner made two Prevention of Future Death Reports against Islington Borough Council and Peabody Housing Association respectively.

Read more here.

Other recent instructions include:

• Five day inquest on behalf of a Trust in an inquest into a death by suicide in the community;
• Two day inquest representing a couple in an inquest into the death of their child due to undetected uterine rupture, in which the Coroner concluded there were multiple and repeated failures in basic obstetric care which cumulatively resulted directly in the baby’s death, and that this was an avoidable death.

Clinical Negligence

Imogen is developing her clinical negligence acting for both claimants and defendants in a variety of claims. She has appeared in costs and case management conferences, conferences with experts, pre-trial reviews and approval hearings.

During her pupillage, Imogen was supervised by two clinical negligence specialists, Sebastian Naughton and Michael Walsh KC. She was exposed to complex clinical negligence cases and developed her understanding of liability, settlement negotiations, mediations, and expert conferences as a result.

Imogen has experience drafting:

·       Particulars of Claim

·       Defences in clinical negligence

·       Counter-Schedules

·       Skeleton arguments

·       Advice on liability and quantum

Police

Imogen has gained experience in wide range of police orders, and is regularly instructed by police forces in civil applications under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and the Stalking Protection Act 2019. She has appeared in multiple applications in the Magistrates’ Court. She also successfully represented Thames Valley Police at a contested s298 Proceeds of Crime Act appeal in Reading Crown Court.

Imogen completed her pupillage under the supervision of Cecily White and gained exposure to a wide range of police misconduct matters.

Other Experience

As well as practising, Imogen is also Professor of Medical Law at the University of Oxford, where she has held an academic position since 2009. She is also a Fellow and Tutor of St Anne’s College, and a Member of the British Medical Association Medical Ethics Committee. She has previously advised the Ethics and Law Advisory Committee of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

She was Visiting Professor of Law at Gresham College from 2021 – 2023. During her time at Gresham, she gave lectures on topics ranging from euthanasia, egg freezing and vaccination. She has also held visiting fellowships at the Brocher Fondation in Geneva, Hong Kong University, the University of Melbourne and the University of British Columbia. She was an associate editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics from 2010 to 2013. Before going to Oxford, she was a Legal Officer at the Australian Law Reform Commission, and also interned at the World Health Organisation.

PUBLICATIONS

Imogen has published numerous scholarly papers and books in the field of medical law. These include:

• Medical Decision-Making on Behalf of Young Children: A Comparative Perspective, (Hart Publishing, 2020) (co-edited with C Auckland and J Herring)
• Parental Rights, Best Interests and Significant Harms: Medical Decision-Making on Behalf of Children Post-Great Ormond Street Hospital v Yates, (Hart Publishing, 2019) (co-edited with C Auckland and J Herring)
• “Time to start de Novo: the Paul, Purchase and Polmear litigation and the temporal gap problem in secondary victim claims for psychiatric injury” (2023) 39 Professional Negligence 24 (with Catherine Kelly)
• ‘Offsetting Damages in Wrongful Conception and Birth Cases: A Way Through the Post-McFarlane Mire’ (2022) (2022) 138 Law Quarterly Review 58 (with Cressida Auckland)
• ‘Who’s Afraid of Imaginary Claims? Common Misunderstandings of the Origin of the Action for Pure Psychiatric Injury in Negligence 1888–1943’ (2021) Law Quarterly Review (with Catherine Kelly)

Seminars, lectures and other speaking engagements

Imogen is regularly invited to give talks to medical professionals working in paediatrics, including the John Radcliffe Hospital, Leeds Teaching Hospital, Helen and Douglas House, and the Association for Paediatric Palliative Medicine. Imogen’s Gresham College lectures are available here.

She is also often consulted by the media as an expert. Recently, for example, she:

• Appeared as a guest on the BBC’s Briefing Room, talking about euthanasia (2024) – available here
• Was interviewed by the Times on her work on oocyte freezing (2024)
• Was interviewed by the BBC World Service on the Scottish assisted dying bill (2024)
• Was a guest on BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour (2022) – available here
• Was interviewed for a feature on Social Egg Freezing, Boots Magazine February 2021
• Organised and ran the MyBody, MyLife travelling exhibition, (2017) – available here
• Was interviewed by BBC: Digital Tracking Medicine, (14 November 2017) (broadcast on the World Service and Radio 4)

Further speaker appearances include:

• ‘Should parents have the final say on the medical treatment of their children?’, University of Stockholm, 2nd November 2020 (online)
• ‘Should parents have the final say on the medical treatment of their children?’, The Baron de Lancey Lecture, University of Cambridge, 8th March 2019 (available here)
• ‘Psychiatric Injury and the Hysterical Woman’ (with Catherine Kelly), Science, Medicine and Culture in the Nineteenth Century Seminar Series, University of Oxford, 23 October 2018
• Invited speaker, ‘Law and Ethics in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go’, Fiction and Human Rights Network, run by Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), 6th January 2017
• Invited speaker and panellist, Conference on Property in the Body, Hong Kong University, 6-7 April 2017.
• Invited panellist (with Kate Greasley, Angela Ballantyne and Naomi Wolf), Does the pro-choice movement ‘cultivate a hardness of heart’?, St Anne’s College, Oxford, 9th June 2016
• Invited panellist, ‘Beating the Biological Clock – Should You Freeze Your Eggs?’, University College
• ‘Must the Surgeon take the Pill? Negligence Duty in the Context of Cognitive Enhancement’, The Walter S Owen Lecture, Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, October 2013 London, October 2015 (organised by Progress Educational Trust)

Memberships & Appointments

• Member, Working Group of Royal College of Paediatric and Child Health on second opinions in decision-making for ill children (2021)
• Invited Advisor to Ethics and Law Committee, Royal College of Paediatric and Child Health on their response to the proposed ‘Charlie’s Law’ on decision-making for ill children (2020)

pro bono work

Imogen has been included in the Pro Bono Recognition List for the past two years. The list recognises barristers & other legal professionals who provided 25 hours or more pro bono legal assistance over the course of a year.

Qualifications

• 2005: PhD (Law), (Dean’s commendation award for an outstanding doctoral thesis), University of Tasmania
• 2005: MA (Bioethics), Distinction, Monash University
• 1992–1998: LLB, BA (Comb) (Modern History), First Class honours (Modern History) University of Tasmania

PRIZES, SCHOLARSHIPS & Awards

• British Academy/Leverhulme Grant, A Legal and Historical Analysis of the Action for Psychiatric Injury in English Law (1880-2020) (2019)
• Dean’s Commendation Award for an Outstanding Doctoral Thesis, University of Tasmania, 2006
• Wellcome Trust Prize Studentship in Biomedical Ethics, Wellcome Trust, 2004

Further Information

For further details of Imogen’s practice please click on the links to the left or contact a member of the clerking or client service team.

Registered Name: Imogen Louise Goold
Bar Council Membership No: 78652