Model jailed after lying about her symptoms and tried to sue NHS for £3,000,000

A scammer who sued an NHS trust for more than £3 million claiming they left her unable to walk has been caught lying after she went to a body painting convention.

Kae Burnell-Chambers sued Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust in 2019, saying medics had negligently delayed performing emergency surgery on a spinal problem three years earlier.

The 44-year-old said the delay meant she needed a stick to walk, but after the trust grew suspicious they found her walking unaided and even participating in body painting conventions.

Now Mrs Justice Tipples has ruled Burnell-Chambers chose to ‘deliberately lie’ about her symptoms and showed ‘fundamental dishonesty’.

She also ordered her to pay £135,000 of the trust’s legal costs.

Burnell-Chambers, who attended court with a stick, wept as she left court to begin her sentence.

Sheadmitted to contempt of court in July, with her barristers claiming that she should not be jailed due to the impact on her son, whose father is a convicted sex offender.

She said: ‘You deliberately lied to all these medical experts, leading them to believe that you were unable to do very much at all and that you were a person with significant support and accommodation needs.’

She continued: ‘You deliberately made out that your condition was always at its worst, when that was untrue.

‘This was offending at a serious level that crosses the custodial threshold.’

She concluded: ‘This is not a case where, having weighed all the relevant factors, the sentence can be suspended.’

Sadie Crapper, for the trust, told a hearing, on Wednesday, in written submissions that Burnell-Chambers first suffered from cauda equina syndrome in 2014.

The condition causes the nerves in a person’s lower back to become severely compressed and requires early treatment.

Burnell-Chambers presented herself to A&E on August 10 2016, and received emergency surgery the following day, but said in court documents for her legal claim that negligence by the trust meant she ‘can’t do anything’.

Ms Crapper said that the trust initially resisted her legal claim, arguing that she made a good recovery and that Burnell-Chambers was ‘deliberately fabricating and/or grossly exaggerating her symptoms’ to win more compensation.

It began contempt proceedings in 2023, claiming that Burnell-Chambers failed to disclose ‘fluctuations’ in her symptoms to medical experts and that she could attend body painting conventions in Birmingham, Sheffield and Suffolk across several years.

The barrister continued that Burnell-Chambers’ compensation bid included claims for future care costs of £833,000, loss of earnings of £692,000 and accommodation costs of more than £722,000.

But she said the true value of the claim was ‘likely to have been less than £200,000’, and that Burnell-Chambers should be jailed as she was ‘entirely to blame for her exaggeration’.

Admitting contempt of court in July, Burnell-Chambers said: ‘I offer my apologies to the court and the claimant. I understand that what I did was wrong.

‘I accept that I should be punished for my decisions.’

Ben Bradley KC, for Burnell-Chambers, said his client had ‘significant mitigation’ and that her ‘personal and familial situations are far from orthodox’.

The barrister said that Burnell-Chambers cared for her son with her partner, who is a convicted sex offender.

He continued that social services had concluded that it was not ‘safe and appropriate’ for her son to be in her partner’s sole care.

But Mrs Justice Tipples said that plans had been made for the partner to leave their home and for their son to be cared for by a relative if Burnell-Chambers was jailed.

She continued that while immediate custody ‘will cause disruption’ and ‘have an adverse effect’ on Burnell-Chambers’ son, this was ‘all outweighed by the very serious nature’ of the contempt.

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