A killer who is suing NHS Tayside after brutally stabbing his wife to death is set to have an eight-day court hearing in his bid to win £250,000 damages.
Neil Cumming claims he has endured “distress and anxiety” over his spouse’s suffering before her death.
Cumming’s wife, Barbara Jane, 40, sustained 36 major stab wounds to her body, arms and hands in the fatal attack at the family home in Mary Findlay Drive, Longforgan, on July 15 in 2011.
He is suing the health board claiming that a psychiatrist was negligent in failing to get him admitted to hospital the previous day.
Cumming was ordered to be detained in the high-security State Hospital at Carstairs in 2012 as he was acquitted of murder in the frenzied attack on the grounds that he was insane at the time.
He was suffering a persistent delusional disorder and the production manager thought he was being spied on by work colleagues at the Michelin tyre factory in Dundee.
Cumming, 50, subsequently raised a civil action against the health authority seeking compensation. In it it is claimed he “has endured distress and anxiety in contemplation of the suffering of the deceased prior to her death”.
It is said he has suffered grief and sorrow because of the death and that he suffers from the knowledge that he brought about the death.
He is also seeking compensation for his detention in the State Hospital.
After the killing Cumming tried to commit suicide, driving at speeds in excess of 100 mph on the A90 Perth to Dundee road before crashing into the back of a lorry.
During a further brief hearing in the action at the Court of Session in Edinburgh on Wednesday, judge Lord Boyd of Duncansby was told that an eight-day hearing was due to begin in January 2018.
Calum Wilson, counsel for Cumming, told the court: “Parties have exchanged expert reports on liability issues.”
