What are medical negligence claims really about? Although the legal definition of "medical negligence" involves the failure of healthcare service providers to exercise a standard of due care, empirical findings from a qualitative case study set in Sri Lanka demonstrate thatmedical negligence claims do not straightforwadly represent the same claim is a singular episode which is caught in the midst of a dynamic dispute journey and is, therefore , part of a larger process involving its participants' understandings of explanations of, and responses to healthcare experiences.