A 16-year-old girl, facing life in a wheelchair due to a surgeon's error, has won the right to multi-million-pound compensation from the NHS.

A top judge ruled that a ‘misplaced screw’ inserted by the surgeon during the operation to prevent Laura May spending her life as a hunchback was the cause of her paraplegia.

Laura was just 11, and trying on clothes while out shopping, when her mother Christine first noticed that the right side of her back was misshapen and the tragic train of events began.

A scan led to a diagnosis of scoliosis - a curvature of the spine which in former times would have left sufferers living out their lives as hunchbacks - and prompt corrective surgery was needed.

Laura, of Kirkstall Close, Chorley, went under the knife at the Royal Preston Hospital in February 2005 and experienced orthopaedic surgeon, Roger Smith, performed a complex operation to correct the curvature, involving insertion of screws, hooks and rods.

Mrs Justice Slade told London's High Court that, when she went into the hospital, Laura had ‘full use of her limbs’ but, by the end of the operation, she was paraplegic.

The judge ruled that the cause of the medical disaster was Mr Smith's ‘misplacement of a pedicle screw’ in Laura's spine during the operation. The result was a piercing of the youngster's spinal cord and a catastrophic leak of cerebro-spinal fluid.

Ruling the Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust fully liable to compensate the teenager for her injuries, the judge said the surgeon had been negligent in failing to use imaging techniques to ensure that the screw was correctly placed.

The judge's ruling means Laura is now entitled to millions of pounds in compensation from the trust to cover the enormous costs of the care, assistance, accommodation and equipment she will need for the rest of her life.

The exact amount of her payout has yet to be assessed, however the court heard Laura's lawyers will now be seeking a £250,000 ‘interim payment’ to tide her over until her final award.

Her barrister, David Kenny, said that would be only ‘a very small proportion’ of her eventual damages.

NHS barrister, Margaret Bowron QC, told the judge her findings were ‘against the weight of the evidence’.

The trust now has 21 days to lodge an application directly with the Appeal Court.