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Deprivation of liberty and force-feeding

Posted on August 7, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

The Court of Protection grappled with a difficult issue in A NHS Trust v Dr A 2013

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/COP/2013/2442.html

Apologies in advance – this is a long article, it is complex and if you don’t do mental capacity or mental health law you probably don’t need to read it.

The facts of the case involved a Doctor who began manifesting erratic behaviour, for example insisting that anyone in the colour red was a member of the Iranian Secret Police and that a book he was writing disproving evolution would make him famous after his death. Dr A also went on hunger strike, following the confiscation of his passport by the UK Border Agency.

Although one expert was of the view that Dr A’s behaviour was all an attempt to apply pressure to reverse decisions about his asylum case, the vast majority of the experts considered that he had had a genuine breakdown of his mental health.

Without going into the details too much, the Court were satisfied that Dr A was suffering from a delusional disorder impairing the functioning of his brain affecting his ability to use or weigh up information relevant to his decision as to whether or not to accept nourishment. (And thus in terms, that he did not have the capacity to decide to refuse nourishment)

The Court then weighed up whether it was in Dr A’s best interests to receive nutrition by way of force feeding or not – this is not a simple decision, and a number of competing factors were weighed up and considered. The Court determined that it would be in Dr A’s best interests to receive nutrition by way of nasogastric tube feeding.

However, an issue then arose about whether, having made the declaration that Dr A lacked capacity, and that force-feeding would be in his best interests, whether the Court actually had jurisdiction to compel it.

I therefore conclude that it is in Dr. A’s best interests for this court to make an order that permits the forcible administration of artificial nutrition and hydration.

I now turn to consider the power of the court to make the order in his best interests. The question emerged in the course of argument as to whether, in the circumstances of this case, the court had the power under the MCA to make an order for the forcible feeding of Dr. A. Subsequently, the investigation and analysis of that question has taken a considerable amount of time, both for the parties’ legal representatives and the court. It is alarming to find that the legal position on this fundamental issue is far from straightforward

The fact that the next part of the judgment is headed “Eligibility – a new gap?” will make practitioners in this field very nervous – the last gap went all the way to Europe, and ended up with the Mental Capacity Act and all of the impenetrability that the MCA has become in practice.

The Court had to look at whether force-feeding was a deprivation of liberty, and concluded that yes it was. This may well turn out to be important in other cases involving for example political protests, Brady-type efforts to end ones own life or persons with eating disorders.

When determining whether the circumstances amount objectively to a deprivation of liberty, as opposed to a mere restriction of liberty, the court looks first at the concrete situation in which the individual finds himself. In this case, there is no dispute that subjecting Dr. A. to forcible feeding amounts to a deprivation of liberty. In order to feed him he will be physically restrained by NHS staff against his will while a nasogastric tube is inserted. The restraint continues to prevent him removing the tube. On occasions, in this process, he is sedated. He is not allowed to leave the hospital. The staff are effecting complete control over his care, treatment and movements, and, as a result, he loses a very significant degree of personal autonomy.

The issue then was whether the Court had powers under the MCA to make an order that had the effect of depriving Dr A of his liberty. This becomes very complex, very quickly, even by MCA standards.

16A(1) of the MCA are clear:

“If a person is ineligible to be deprived of liberty by this Act, the court may not include in a welfare order provision which authorises the person to be deprived of his liberty.”

And then a long trawl through Schedule 1A of the MCA which sets out when a person is ineligible to be deprived of liberty under the MCA shows that the MCA can’t be used to deprive a person of their liberty if they are being, or are capable of being , detained under the Mental Health Act.

In the light of the evidence suggesting that the criteria set by section 2 MHA might be met in respect of Dr. A., it seemed to me that it was at least arguable that he was “within the scope of the MHA” and therefore, by virtue of paragraph 5 of schedule 1A of the MCA, ineligible to be detained under the MCA.

The hospital actually detained Dr A under s3 of the Mental Health Act during the interim period between the Judge asking trial counsel how the heck this could be fixed and them coming up with solutions. Did that help?

The consequence of placing Dr. A under section 3 was, however, merely to accentuate the difficulties about the application of section 16A because, although removing him from the ambit of case E of schedule 1A, it put him squarely within case A. On any view, he is both subject to a “hospital treatment regime” within the meaning of paragraph 8(1) of the schedule and also detained in a hospital under that regime. In those circumstances he is, prima facie, ineligible to be deprived of his liberty under the MCA and the Court of Protection may not include in any welfare order any provision which authorises him to be so deprived.

Put boldly in that way, it will be seen that this might make it impossible for someone to be treated in a way that is outwith his “treatment” under the MHA if that treatment involves a deprivation of liberty. To take a stark example: if someone detained under section 3 is suffering from gangrene so as to require an amputation in his best interests and objects to that operation, so that it could only be carried by depriving him of his liberty, that process could not prima facie be carried out either under the MHA or under the MCA. This difficulty potentially opens a gap every bit as troublesome as that identified in the Bournewood case itself.

So, you can provide treatment to a person who is, or is capable of being, detained under the Mental Health Act, in accordance with the MHA BUT if the treatment isn’t capable of being provided under the MHA you cannot then turn to the MCA as being a vehicle for providing that treatment even if the person does not have capacity and the Court has declared that the treatment is in their best interests, because of Schedule 1 A of the MCA.

Sorry, this is going to be complex, it takes about five pages of going through the Act itself to get to that point – the Judge was so exasperated by what he described as the ambiguity, obscurity and possible absurdity of the legislation, that he authorised counsel to look at the Parliamentary debates in a Pepper v Hart exercise to see if this idiocy was what Parliament had intended, or whether it was a cock-up. (Judges hardly ever embark on the exercise of looking at what Parliament said about the construction of the Act – it’s that Otto von Bismarck “laws are like sausages – it is better not to see them being made” thing)

The Official Solicitor now suggests three solutions to the problem described above:

(1) The necessary feeding and associated measures can be taken under the MHA. There is therefore no need for an order under the MCA.

(2) If the necessary feeding and associated measures cannot be taken under the MHA, an order can still and should be made under the MCA interpreted in accordance with the Human Rights Act 1998.

(3) If the necessary feeding or associated measures cannot be taken under the MHA or the MCA, an order should be made under the High Court’s inherent jurisdiction.

I shall consider these options in turn.

Authorising the treatment under the Mental Health Act

Understandably, the Official Solicitor cited the Ian Brady case as authority for the suggestion that force-feeding can be authorised under the Mental Health Act.

This is the key passage in the Brady judgment that sanctioned his force-feeding under the MHA (a decision that frankly, I found a bit ‘iffy’ at the time, going much further than traditional views that one can forcibly treat the mental disorder but not physical disorders under the MHA)

71. “On any view, and to a high degree of probability, section 63 (MHA) was triggered because what arose was the need for medical treatment for the mental disorder from which the Applicant was and is suffering. The hunger strike is a manifestation or symptom of the personality disorder. The fact (if such it be) that a person without mental disorder could reach the same decision on a rational basis in similar circumstances does not avail the Applicant because he reached and persists in his decision because of his personality disorder.”

The medical evidence in this case did not back that up

In this case, therefore, the clinicians treating Dr. A. feel strongly that artificial nutrition and hydration and ancillary treatment are, on the facts of the case, treatment for a physical disorder, starvation and dehydration, and not for the underlying mental disorder. Dr. A. is not suffering from an eating disorder. Whilst feeding him may make him feel better, it is not treating him for a mental disorder as it would be were he suffering from anorexia nervosa.

On this point I have found the views articulated by the treating clinicians, and in particular Dr. WJ, persuasive. She does not consider that the administration of artificial nutrition and hydration to Dr. A. in the circumstances of this case to be a medical treatment for his mental disorder, but rather for a physical disorder that arises from his decision to refuse food. That decision is, of course, flawed in part because his mental disorder deprives him of the capacity to use and weigh information relevant to the decision. The physical disorder is thus in part a consequence of his mental disorder, but, in my judgement, it is not obviously either a manifestation or a symptom of the mental disorder. This case is thus distinguishable from both the Croydon case and Brady.

I also accept the submissions put forward by Miss Paterson, and acknowledged by the Official Solicitor, that it is generally undesirable to extend the meaning of medical treatment under the MHA too far so as to bring about deprivation of liberty in respect of sectioned or sectionable patients beyond what is properly within the ambit of the MHA. I recognise the need for identifying, where possible, a clear dividing line between what is and what is not treatment for a mental disorder within the meaning of the MHA; but I venture to suggest that in medicine, as in the law, it is not always possible to discern clear dividing lines. In case of uncertainty, where there is doubt as to whether the treatment falls within section 145 and section 63, the appropriate course is for an application to be made to the court to approve the treatment. That approach ensures that the treatment given under section 63 of the MHA will be confined to that which is properly within the definition of section 145 as amended. It would help to ensure that patients with mental disorders are, so far as possible, treated informally rather than under section. Finally, it ensures compliance with Article 8 and provides the patient with a more effective remedy than would otherwise be available, namely a forensic process to determine whether the treatment is in his best interests.

I therefore decline to make a declaration that artificial nutrition and hydration can be administered to Dr. A. under the MHA

Authorising the treatment under the MCA, by interpreting it in light of the Human Rights Act

I liked this argument, it is clever. If the MCA as drafted, puts a Court in a position of not being able to protect the right to life of a person who the Court has determined does not have the capacity to refuse treatment which would save his life, the Court ought to interpret the MCA in such a way that it does NOT clash with the article 2 right to life. And using the powerful tool of s3 (1) Human Rights Act to do so

Under section 3(1) of the Human Rights Act:

“So far as it is possible to do so, primary legislation and subordinate legislation must be read and given effect in a way which is compatible with the Convention rights.”

The second basis on which the Official Solicitor invites the court to authorise the forcible feeding of Dr. A. is under section 16 of the MCA. He submits that the provisions of the MCA read in compliance with the Human Rights Act and the European Convention permit the court to take this course. Mr. Moon and Miss Street submit, first, that, so far as it is possible to do so, the MCA must be interpreted so as to be consistent with the best interests of the person lacking capacity (section 1(5) of the MCA). Unless the court authorises the forcible administration of artificial nutrition and hydration to Dr. A. he will die. The court is thus under an obligation to interpret its powers in a way that ensures his life is saved.

It is submitted by Mr. Moon and Miss Street, however, that the obligations on the court go further. Under Article 2 of the European Convention of Human Rights “everyone’s rights to life shall be protected by law”. Amongst the duties imposed on the State by Article 2 is the so-called “operational duty” requiring the State in certain circumstances to take preventative measures to protect an individual whose life is at risk: Osman v. United Kingdom [1998] 29 EHRR 245.

But it is still No

The course proposed by counsel, though in some ways attractive, involves reading into section 16A a provision that would have the effect of fundamentally altering its clear meaning. The scheme of the amendments to the MCA, introduced in 2007, is plain. In certain circumstances defined in schedule 1A, the MHA regime takes precedence over the MCA. No argument has been advanced which has persuaded me to disagree with the assessment of Charles J in Re GJ (supra) that the MHA has primacy over the MCA and, in particular, his observation at paragraph 96 of the judgment:

“Case A is a clear indication of the primacy of the MHA 1983 when a person is detained in hospital under the hospital treatment regime and it would seem that when it applies P cannot be deprived of liberty under the MCA in a hospital for any purpose.” [my emphasis]

In such circumstances, and notwithstanding the uncompromising words of Lord Nicholls quoted above, any court, particularly a Judge at first instance, must at least hesitate before reading into a statute words that would have the effect of fundamentally altering its meaning and undermining the apparent scheme of the legislation. He should hesitate still further when the proposed reading in has not been the subject of full argument on both sides nor referred to the relevant Government department. Despite the great efforts of counsel, I am far from satisfied that all the consequences of their proposed reading in of words into section 16A have been fully identified. It may be that, with further thought, an alternative reading or reinterpretation may seem prevalent. For example, it may be thought that, if any statute or provision needs to be reconsidered to ensure capability with ECHR in this context, it should be the MHA rather than the MCA.

I acknowledge, of course, my obligation under section 6(1) of the Human Rights Act not to act in a way that is incompatible with that Act. Were it not for the availability of the inherent jurisdiction, I might be more inclined to adopt the course proposed above or to arrange further hearings before making a decision. Happily, however, for the reasons I will now explain, I am satisfied that the powers available to me under the inherent jurisdiction enable me to comply with my obligations under that section.

Inherent jurisdiction then?

The Judge set out the body of authority which endorses the view that the Court hold an inherent jurisdiction in relation to adults just as it does for children, ending with the most recent authority.

90. Confirmation is provided by the more recent decision of the Court of Appeal in DL v. A Local Authority [2012] EWCA Civ. 253 in which Davis LJ said at paragraph 70:

“Where cases fall precisely within the ambit of the MCA 2005 and are capable of being dealt with under its provisions there is no room for – as well as no need for – invocation of the inherent jurisdiction. However, even in the case of an adult who lacks capacity within the meaning of the MCA 2005, it appears that the inherent jurisdiction remains available to cover situations not precisely within the reach of the statute.”

The issue is considered at greater length in the judgment of McFarlane LJ who, in reaching the same conclusion, pointed out the MCA contains no provision restricting the use of the inherent jurisdiction in terms of those found in section 100 of the Children Act 1989, “Limited use of Wardship and Inherent Jurisdiction in matters relating to Children”. On this, McFarlane LJ said at paragraph 61:

“It would have been open to Parliament to include a similar provision, either permitting or restricting the use of the inherent jurisdiction in cases relating to the capacity to make decisions which are not within the MCA 2005. In the absence of any express provision, the clear implication is that if there are matters outside the statutory scheme to which the inherent jurisdiction applies then that jurisdiction continues to be available to continue to act as the ‘great safety net’ described by Lord Donaldson.”

In essence, if Parliament wanted to stop the use of inherent jurisdiction to creatively solve problems, they need to legislate this explicitly.

This is the cunning argument deployed (which involves assuming that when the MCA says “Court” it means only the Court of Protection, not the High Court, even though in practice, as here, it is likely to be the same Judge, sitting in the same room, who just metaphorically puts on a different hat for a moment.

93. (1) The prohibition on making an order which authorises the person being deprived of his liberty is expressly restricted to the Court of Protection exercising its statutory jurisdiction under the MCA and is not, but could have been, extended to the High Court exercising its inherent jurisdiction.

(2) Following McFarlane LJ in DL, the clear implication is that Parliament did not intend to prevent the High Court exercising its jurisdiction to make an order in the best interests and in order to uphold the Article 2 rights of a person lacking capacity in the circumstances of a case such as this.

(3) Furthermore, Parliament cannot have intended to remove the safety net from a person lacking capacity who requires the orders sought to be made in order to prevent his death.

(4) The relevant concept is his ineligibility to be “deprived by this Act” (section 16A(1) and schedule 1A at paragraph 2).

(5) If a person is ineligible to be deprived of his liberty by the MCA, section 16A provides that “the court may not include in a welfare order provision which authorises the person to be deprived of his liberty”. In this provision:

(a) “The court” means the Court of Protection; and

(b) “the welfare order” means an order under section 16(2)(a) of the Mental Capacity Act by the Court of Protection.

I agree with those submissions.

So, having determined that the Court had power under the Inherent Jurisdiction (which is like the legal equivalent of Duct Tape, or perhaps more accurately Polyfilla to cover up the cracks), the Judge then had to consider whether he should go on to use that power.

the court, as a public authority, cannot lawfully act in a way that is incompatible with a right under ECHR. I accept the submission that I am under an operational duty under Article 2 to protect Dr. A., a man who, as I have found, lacks capacity to decide whether to accept nutrition and hydration against the risk of death from starvation. By making the orders sought by the Trust under the inherent jurisdiction, I will be complying with that operational duty.

In all the circumstances, I hold that this court has the power under its inherent jurisdiction to make a declaration and order authorising the treatment of an incapacitated adult that includes the provision for the deprivation of his liberty provided that the order complies with Article 5. Unless and until this court or another court clarifies the interpretation of section 16A of the MCA, it will therefore be necessary, in any case in which a hospital wishes to give treatment to a patient who is ineligible under section 16A, for the hospital to apply for an order under the inherent jurisdiction where the treatment (a) is outside the meaning of medical treatment of the MHA 1983 and (b) involves the deprivation of a patient’s liberty.

Under that jurisdiction, I am satisfied, for the reasons set out above, that an order for forcible feeding of Dr. A. is in his best interests. I therefore make the orders sought by the applicant Trust, that is to say declaring that it shall be lawful for the Trust clinicians to provide Dr. A. with artificial nutrition and hydration and to use reasonable force and restraint for that purpose, and further declaring that, insofar as those measures amount to a deprivation of liberty, they shall be lawful.

An elegant fix of a mess caused by Parliament.

There is a postscript update on Dr A, which may be of interest

98. On 1st July 2013 (before the transcript of the judgment was finalised) the Trust notified my clerk that Dr A had returned to Iran, having made, in the doctors’ opinion, a capacitous decision to do so. I received statements from Drs R and WJ and correspondence from the parties, detailing the clinical decisions and events, which preceded his departure. I am informed that Dr A had continued to be provided with artificial nutrition and hydration requiring restraint. He also received amisulpride, an anti-psychotic. His mental state gradually improved, in response to the medication. Dr A started drinking and eating voluntarily on 8 and 10 May respectively. His weight returned to a level within a normal range. The Trust states that Dr A first mentioned he was returning to Iran on 23 May 2013. He made the final decision on 4 June 2013; after taking medical advice and legal advice from his immigration solicitor. On 14^th June 2013 Dr WJ rescinded Dr A’s detention under section 3 MHA; his mental condition having continued to improve. He returned to Iran on 24 June 2013. I will now make an order concluding these proceedings, discharging the declarations and the order for a review hearing.

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Posted in adult social care, case law, court of protection and tagged A NHS Trust v Dr A 2013, deprivation of liberty, Dr A, force-feeding, high court, ian brady, inherent jurisdiction, mental capacity act, mental health act, treatment under mental capacity act, treatment under mental health act, use of inherent jurisdiction. Bookmark the permalink.

Laying down a marker – the Court of Appeal speaks on analysis of welfare checklist

Posted on August 6, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

As regular readers will know, we had been anticipating the Court of Appeal in Re B S to deal with issues of how appellant Courts were to tackle appeals in the light of the changes to the tests highlighted by the Supreme Court in Re B.

We hadn’t necessarily anticipated that the Court of Appeal would get under the bonnet of this issue before then, but to an extent, they have, in Re G (A child) 2013. The case really delves very carefully into an often overlooked aspect of the judicial decision-making – the welfare checklist.

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2013/965.html

The facts of the original case , determined by a District Judge (which was appealed, and then that appeal decision appealed to the Court of Appeal) aren’t really that important.

What is important is the Court of Appeal’s clear guidance as to how Judges in care proceedings are to tackle the task.

In broad terms, this is the order of events

The Court must establish the facts and particularly to make findings on any relevant facts or disputed facts
The Court must then evaluate whether on the basis of those facts, the section 31 threshold is crossed
The Court should then apply the welfare checklist to the circumstances of the case
If the case involves a plan of adoption, the Court should also apply the welfare checklist as set out in the Adoption and Children Act 2002 to the circumstances of the case
The Court should then consider proportionality when determining what order to make, and in an adoption case must specifically address the formulation set down by the Supreme Court in Re B (in essence that ‘nothing else will do’

Nothing within that sequence of events is at all controversial or new. What might be new is the Court of Appeal’s focus on the welfare checklist and how that exercise must be approached judicially, and by any appellant Court looking at whether the exercise was approached.

In particular whether the approach of dealing with the welfare checklist in a linear way – by looking at the merits of the parents case against the welfare checklist and then only at point (g) range of powers available to the Court mapping out the pros and cons of the various options, is in fact the wrong way to go about things.

The wording of certain elements of the welfare checklist must, I would suggest, involve a direct comparison of the relevant options that are being considered, for example:

(c) the likely effect on him of any change in his circumstances;

(e) any harm which he has suffered or is at risk of suffering;

(f) how capable each of his parents, and any other person in relation to whom the court considers the question to be relevant, is of meeting his needs.

Under s 1(3)(c), consideration of the effect of any change in the child’s circumstances must involve considering, in the present case, not just the prospect of returning to the mother’s care but must include consideration of the effects, positive and negative, of placement in long-term foster care. Under s 1(3)(e), consideration of the risk of harm obviously will include the potential for future harm from parental care, but must also require evaluation of any risk of harm from the alternative option provided by ‘any other person’, namely the local authority as corporate parent, for example emotional harm as a result of long-term separation of a child from his parent. Under s 1(3)(f), when considering how capable ‘each of his parents, and any other person’ are to meet the child’s needs, again I would suggest that, alongside consideration of the parent’s capacity, there is a need to look at the strengths and detriments in the local authority’s capacity to meet his needs through long-term fostering.

What the Court of Appeal are saying here is that the Court must not simply look at the case for the child remaining with the parent, analyse this, and then if determining that this is not possible, move on to considering what type of order would be appropriate. The Court cannot properly decide whether the child should be with a parent based on the pluses and minuses of THAT option, but must weigh into the balance the pluses and minuses of the OTHER options.

It is not, as they say, a linear exercise, but one of laying out the various options and comparing them alongside one another. When considering, for example, the ‘capacity of the parent or any other person to meet his needs’ the Court must not only look at what the parent could offer under no order or a Supervision Order, but what the Local Authority could offer (including any deficiencies) under a Care Order or Placement Order.

The structure of the welfare checklist, culminating as it does with the “range of powers available to the Court” seems to tempt the Court into approaching that comparison of the various orders only at that stage, but this would be the wrong approach.

They develop this further – underlining mine

In most child care cases a choice will fall to be made between two or more options. The judicial exercise should not be a linear process whereby each option, other than the most draconian, is looked at in isolation and then rejected because of internal deficits that may be identified, with the result that, at the end of the line, the only option left standing is the most draconian and that is therefore chosen without any particular consideration of whether there are internal deficits within that option.

The linear approach, in my view, is not apt where the judicial task is to undertake a global, holistic evaluation of each of the options available for the child’s future upbringing before deciding which of those options best meets the duty to afford paramount consideration to the child’s welfare.

One only has to take an extreme example of the effect of linear consideration to see the potential danger for this approach. The linear model proceeds by evaluating and then eliminating each individual option in turn before selecting the option at the end of the line, without evaluation of its own internal merits or de-merits, simply on the basis that it is the only remaining outcome. Much therefore depends on which end of the line the selector starts the process. Conventionally those judges who deploy a linear approach start, for understandable reasons, with the option of rehabilitation to a parent and end with the option of a care or adoption order. If, however, for the purposes of observing the dangers in the process, one were to start at the other end of the line and look at long-term foster care or adoption first, and were then to rule that out on the basis that there are risks and negatives attaching to it, the linear approach would soon arrive at ‘rehabilitation to a parent’ as the only remaining option and select that without any consideration of whether that is in fact the best outcome for the child. All would agree that such an approach would be untenable. I hope, however, that this example demonstrates how inappropriate the linear model is for a judge who is tasked with undertaking a multi-faceted evaluation of a child’s welfare at the end of which one of a range of options has to be chosen.

And later

A further concern about the linear model is that a process which acknowledges that long-term public care, and in particular adoption contrary to the will of a parent, is ‘the most draconian option’, yet does not engage with the very detail of that option which renders it ‘draconian’ cannot be a full or effective process of evaluation. Since the phrase was first coined some years ago, judges now routinely make reference to the ‘draconian’ nature of permanent separation of parent and child and they frequently do so in the context of reference to ‘proportionality’. Such descriptions are, of course, appropriate and correct, but there is a danger that these phrases may inadvertently become little more than formulaic judicial window-dressing if they are not backed up with a substantive consideration of what lies behind them and the impact of that on the individual child’s welfare in the particular case before the court. If there was any doubt about the importance of avoiding that danger, such doubt has been firmly swept away by the very clear emphasis in Re B on the duty of the court actively to evaluate proportionality in every case.

In mounting this critique of the linear model, I am alive to the fact that, of course, a judgment is, by its very nature, a linear structure; in common with every other linear structure, it has a beginning, a middle and an end. My focus is not upon the structure of a judge’s judgment but upon that part of the judgment, indeed that part of the judicial analysis before the written or spoken judgment is in fact compiled, where the choice between options actually takes place. What is required is a balancing exercise in which each option is evaluated to the degree of detail necessary to analyse and weigh its own internal positives and negatives and each option is then compared, side by side, against the competing option or options.

I think those words about “formulaic window dressing” are apt – and are similar in nature to the reinforcement of the Supreme Court in Re B that the Court have to genuinely look at and tackle proportionality and human rights, rather than just the stock phrases of ‘the interference with article 8 is proportionate and necessary in this case to safeguard the child’ without looking behind that stock phrase into what is genuinely meant and intended. When the term ‘draconian’ is thrown about the Court room, which it is, and often– if one were somehow able to calculate all of the occasions when the word ‘draconian’ was uttered I think 85% or more would be in the Family Court; it isn’t sufficient just to say the word, those present must feel the weight of what that word really means.

It becomes clear then, that the role of a Court in determining any application for public law orders is to get heavily stuck into the Welfare Checklist. The culture that has sprung up over years of the Welfare Checklist largely being extracted from the social worker’s statement with perhaps a few corrections or additions here or there, is unlikely, in the light of Re G to be sufficient.

This must be an comparative exercise balancing each of the options open to the Court and weighing them each against the other. It would be fair to say that most Welfare Checklists I have seen have been constructed more on the linear model, where one starts with an assumption that the child should be placed with the parents and analyses whether or not that is possible, rather than following each of the options through each stage and weighing each against the other. The weighing process, if any, tends to happen at the very end of the Welfare Checklist once the linear process has been undertaken (resulting in either ‘Yes, child can be with the parent’ or ‘no, the child can’t be with the parent’) when it comes to the Range of Powers available to the Court and positing which orders are appropriate on the basis of the linear process having ruled in or ruled out the child being with a parent.

Re G makes the Welfare Checklist even more important than it is at present, at the very time of course, that the PLO standardised documents take it out as a flowing self-contained part of the social work evidence and it vanished from Guardian’s reports long ago in all but very rare cases. Judges will now have to fish around in the social work statement for the social work analysis of the welfare checklist, scattered as it now is throughout the document rather than residing in one defined section.

As the Court of Appeal say in this case about the two Judges whose decisions were the subject of this appeal (underlining mine again)

Before moving on, I would like to acknowledge the strong professional sympathy that I feel for DJ and HHJ who find themselves in the invidious position of having their judgments subjected to scrutiny by the Court of Appeal armed, as it always is, with 20/20 hindsight but, on this occasion, also armed with a strong decision from the Supreme Court that has been injected into the mix between their respective involvements in the case and this judgment. I wish to stress that the observations that now follow are made in this case because it provides the opportunity to do so, and not because there is anything in these two judgments which is worthy of additional individual criticism. My working life is now spent very largely in reading first instance, and less frequently, first level appeal judgments. The concerns that I have about the process in this case are concerns which have also been evident to a greater or lesser extent in a significant number of other cases; they are concerns which are now given sharper focus following the very clear wake-up call given by the Supreme Court in Re B. I therefore hope that DJ and HHJ will be stoic and may see their judgments in this case as being the unwitting launch vehicles for what now follows, rather than its specific target.

I suspect that in the immediate future, advocates will be particularly alert during the passages of a judgment that deal with the welfare checklist, because the cursory race through it, or formulation of “I adopt the welfare checklist as set out in the social work final evidence” will not be sufficient.

(Moving on from this, one MIGHT conclude that in order for Judges to properly and thoroughly analyse the weaknesses of the care that the State can provide for any particular child, some proper independent, neutral, rigorous and up to date research on delay, breakdown rates, abuse in State care, the factors that are indicative of a successful or poor prognosis for children in State care or adoptive placements, children’s thoughts and feelings about being cared for by the State, how issues of loss endure or resolve for these children and outcomes for children in State care would be both extremely helpful and long overdue. Otherwise there is a risk that the information is either overly rose-tinted or overly negative depending on who is providing it to the Judge)

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Posted in adoption, assessment of risk, case law, supreme court, threshold criteria and tagged adoption, balancing risks, Court of Appeal, decision making process in family court, draconian order, linear approach, re b 2013, Re G 2013, welfare checklist. Bookmark the permalink.

“Capacity to marry”

Posted on August 6, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

Sandwell MBC and RG, GG and SK and SKG 2013 and whether an arranged marriage where the individual had no capacity should endure or be dismantled

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/COP/2013/2373.html

This was a Court of Protection case, heard before Mr Justice Holman. It involved two adult males, both of whom had significant capacity issues.

After considerable investigation and careful consideration by the local authority, the Official Solicitor and experts variously instructed by them, it is now common ground: first, that GG and RG each lack the capacity to make a range of decisions as to where they reside, their care packages, their contact with others, and certain other matters; and, second, that it is in their respective best interest that there be a range of declarations and other orders in terms which have been carefully drafted, and with one exception, are agreed.

The ‘one exception’ is of course, the majority of the litigation. In 2009, RG’s family arranged a marriage for him, to a woman named SK, and that marriage took place in India.

SK then came to the UK. It was her evidence, accepted by the Court, that it was only subsequent to the wedding ceremony that she learned that RG had profound difficulties. Nonetheless, the marriage was consummated.

Mrs SK bears no personal responsibility at all for the events which happened. There is no question whatsoever of her having personally exploited the mental disability of RG. She was an obedient daughter, in a Sikh family, who compliantly participated in the arrangements that her family made for her marriage. Having married him, she now feels committed to him, and, indeed, says that she does now love him. She says that it would be impossible in her culture and religion for her ever to marry anyone else, and that if she were divorced, or her marriage was annulled, she would be ostracised in her community.

The issues that now remain in relation to RG relate to the status and continuation of that marriage. It is accepted by Mrs SK that she cannot provide to RG the support and daily care and assistance that he needs, and always will need, and she no longer resists that he remains living in the accommodation provided and staffed by the local authority. She implores me, however, not to facilitate or permit steps to be taken to annul their marriage.

At the outset of the hearing Mrs SK was also still asking to be permitted to have some sexual relationship with her husband, the more so as it would be culturally impossible, now, for her to do so with any other man. The evidence of Dr Xenitidis was, however, crystal clear that RG has no understanding at all what sex is, and, accordingly, that he lacks any capacity to choose whether to agree to sexual touching. As Xenitidis put it: “He does not even understand what sex is. Whether it is voluntary, or not, is a kind of luxury for him.”

That would place SK in difficulties with the criminal law, and specifically section 30 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, in that making love with her husband could potentially land her in prison, the maximum sentence being life.

Section 27(1)(b) of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 expressly provides that nothing in that Act permits a decision to be made on behalf of a person consenting to have sexual relations. Accordingly, if, as is clear, RG himself lacks any capacity to consent to sexual relations, the court cannot provide any consent on his behalf, even if (I stress if) that might enable him to gain some physical pleasure from some sexual activity.

For these reasons the order will include a declaration that RG lacks capacity to consent to sexual relations. It will be the duty of the local authority, as his carers, to take all reasonable steps to prevent him from being the victim of a criminal act, and the regular contact between Mrs SK and RG will have to be supervised to the extent necessary to ensure that there is no sexual touching between them. Mrs SK now accepts a condition of contact that she does not communicate to RG that she would like to have sexual relations with him, or go to the bedroom with him.

Turning to the marriage, the Court unsurprisingly found in the light of the expert evidence on RG’s capacity that he had no understanding whatsoever of what a marriage was, that he had not had capacity to enter into the marriage contract.

The argument then, and it becomes an interesting one, is what should happen with the marriage. Underlining mine

There remains, therefore, the question of whether I should declare that it is in the best interests of RG that the Official Solicitor should present a petition for a decree of nullity on his behalf, there being no doubt that RG personally lacks any capacity to make a decision whether to do so.

The Court of Protection cannot itself annul a marriage. So in relation to a petition for nullity all I can do in the present proceedings is authorise, and, if necessary and appropriate, direct that the Official Solicitor presents and pursues one. For that purpose, the actual decision where RG was domiciled on the date of the marriage, would fall to be made, not by me in these proceedings, but by the matrimonial court, once seised with a petition for nullity.

It might well have been an interesting position for the Official Solicitor (who were, on RG’s behalf opposed to petitioning for nullity) if the Court had declared that it was in RG’s best interests for them to do so. Clearly they would have to have either done so, or appealed the declaration.

The LA were very keen for the marriage to be ended, chiefly as a matter of public policy

I have been told that within the area of this particular local authority there are a number of incapacitated adults who have been the subject of arranged or forced marriages, and that it is important to send a strong signal to the Muslim and Sikh communities within their area (and, indeed, elsewhere) that arranged marriages, where one party is mentally incapacitated, simply will not be tolerated, and that the marriages will be annulled

In the forefront of Miss Pratley’s submissions is policy. The position of the local authority is encapsulated in paragraphs 7 and 8 of her cogent, written, outline submissions dated 28 June 2013, where she wrote:

“7: It is plainly a relevant circumstance that RG lacked the capacity to enter into the marriage, and continues to lack that capacity. Indeed, his lack of capacity is a fact of such importance that it would be difficult to argue it is not the starting point (or, if not the starting point, a circumstance of very significant weight) in determining best interests. It is submitted on behalf of the local authority that it is an overarching and compelling consideration in the best interests analysis. Whilst it is not asserted that it could never be in a person’s best interests for the court to decide not to take steps to end their marriage in these circumstances, only in exceptional cases will such a conclusion be sustainable.

8: This is because the court would otherwise make a decision, the effect of which would be that RG remain married in circumstances where he lacked capacity to marry, on the basis of circumstances, such as RG’s wishes and feelings and the impact on RG if his marriage was brought to an end, with little or no weight given to the fact of his incapacity on the basis that he is already married. It is impossible to reconcile this with the fact that a court could never take such considerations into account in allowing RG to marry in the first place. This would undermine the legal foundation of the institution of marriage in England and Wales, where consent is a fundamental element of a legally unassailable and enduring marriage contract.”

SK pleaded vehemently that the marriage should not be annulled, that as a consequence of her religion and culture it would cause her shame and might cause her to be ostracised.

The Official Solicitor took the view that RG would not want to cause SK any harm or distress, and when the issue that SK might have to permanently leave the UK (as she would if the marriage were annulled) he reacted very badly against this, and thus it was in his best interests not to annul the marriage, notwithstanding that he had not had the capacity to enter into it.

The present wishes and feelings of RG himself, so far as they can be ascertained, are quite clear. Although he has such little understanding of marriage that he lacked capacity to marry, he, nevertheless, frequently uses the words “wife”, and “marriage”, or “marry”, in relation to Mrs SK. She visits him regularly, several times a week. Although the visits are quite short, he reacts to them with pleasure and appears to gain pleasure from the visits and from the relationship.

RG reacts badly to references to divorce. Mr Dipak Mohan, his key social worker, said that if RG is told that his marriage is at an end, he is likely to take it extremely badly. When his brother told him that Mrs SK might be deported, he reacted extremely badly and aggressively

The Judge determined that the Official Solicitor was correct

Unquestionably, RG cannot gain the support, pleasures and benefits of a marriage, as normally understood. He cannot gain many other of the pleasures of life that are available to persons of normal capacity. But still he gains some pleasure and some benefits from this marriage and relationship.

Like the Official Solicitor, I am completely unpersuaded that his best interests require or justify that it is now annulled. For these reasons I will exclude from the otherwise agreed order in relation to RG those parts which provide for the Official Solicitor now to present a petition for the marriage to be annulled.

There was obviously a tension in this case between public policy (the compelling argument that marriages arranged by families overseas with the knowledge that the bride or groom lacked any capacity to enter into it should not result in the families benefiting from the marriage enduring) and the individuals in the case, with there being good evidence that RG would have been caused distress by the annulment – since SK would have had to leave the country and little evidence of positive benefit to him. The Judge found in favour of the individual rather than public policy.

Whilst the Judge was at pains to point out at the outset that the case turned on its facts and that he was not seeking to establish any general principles, it is not difficult to see that those acting in such cases in the future would point to the issues in this case as being broadly supportive of the marriage not being annulled on the basis of public policy alone, and that there would have to be benefits to the individual concerned.

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Posted in case law, court of protection and tagged annulment of marriage, arranged marriage, arranged marriage case, best interests, capacity to consent to sex, capacity to marry, court of protection, law on arranged marriage, nullity, official solicitor, public policy, sandwell mbc v RG and GG 2013, what if a person who lacks capacity gets married, will the court annul a marriage if the bride didn't have capacity, will the court annul a marriage if the groom didn't have capacity. Bookmark the permalink.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling – balance, and yes, more neuroscience

Posted on August 5, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

A lot of television and radio shows, particularly news or discussion shows, approach things on the principle of balance. You’ve got to show both sides of the debate and give them equal air-time.

So you get expert number one, Chicken Little, come on and say “The sky is falling, the sky is falling”

Expert number two, puts the counter position “The sky isn’t falling, the principles of gravity don’t work that way, and in the unlikely even that the sky was ever to fall, here would be some catastrophic signs and evidence that we would get”

And then the presenter wraps up, often with the expression “Well, the controversy rages on”

So the listener/viewer doesn’t learn much more than that some people think the sky is falling, others think it isn’t. Some people think that Evolution is a load of nonsense and that the existence of bananas prove that*, others think it isn’t. Some people think that the Holocaust is a fake Jewish conspiracy and it never happened, some people don’t. Some people think we should intervene militarily in Syria, some people think we shouldn’t.

[*Re – Bananas disprove evolution. I am not kidding, this is actually an argument]

The overwhelming message is that there are two sides to every story, there are no right or wrong answers.

What we don’t get is any analysis of whether Chicken Little is someone to be relied upon, or whether a detailed look at Chicken Little’s claims mean that almost anyone with an informed view would disagree.

And so you end up with Chicken Little’s views being just as much air time and weight as the counter-opinion, in order to have ‘balance’

I’m all for balanced debate when the issues are balanced – you can learn a hell of a lot from listening to people who have a contrary view. But it is helpful to know whether the debate is actually balanced (the Syria thing there are genuinely good and awful points on both sides, and though I might have views I wouldn’t say that the other camp is wholly wrong) or whether frankly one side is just wrong (The Holocaust really did happen, Evolution is not nonsense, the sky is not falling)

Long-term readers of the blog may well be aware that the Family Justice Board published some research on the neuroscience behind neglect – it’s all available and discussed here:-

https://suesspiciousminds.com/2012/11/05/taking-neglect-seriously/

And then Wastell and White published a critique of that research, essentially saying that it is being misused to make political decisions and justify a direction of travel that the individual studies simply don’t support

https://suesspiciousminds.com/2013/01/14/semantics-pedantics-and-neuro-mantics/

In very brief summary (the two articles tell you much much more, as do the source papers cited within them), there are two camps on what the neuroscience says. The FJB camp says that the neuroscience shows that there is hard evidence that neglect is very damaging to the underlying structure of children’s brains and that this neglect is difficult or not possible to recover from and that timely intervention and stopping the neglect early is thus vital. The Wastell/White camp say that the scientific evidence for these assertions is simply not there, that the studies the FJB camp rely on are either irrelevant or have been wildly overstated and that in particular, there is neuroscientific evidence that brains are more ‘plastic’ than the FJB camp claim – i.e that where damage occurs, the brain recovers and repairs that damage.

I candidly said in the second piece that not being a neuroscientist, I have no idea whether Wastell and White are correct in their demolition of the FJB research, or whether they are wrong.

I don’t know who “Chicken Little” is in this scenario, or whether either of the camps are “Chicken Little”, but that given that the FJB research has been an important underpinning “child-focussed” reason for the drive towards faster intervention and faster resolution of care proceedings, it is rather important that people who ARE in a position to say :-

(a) The FJB camp are right

(b) Wastell and White are right

(c) One of them is probably more right than the other, but there are some real gray areas that need more studies and better evidence to be confident about deciding the issues

Are asked to say so.

If we are going to make policy decisions, or case decisions, we really do need to know if there is genuine doubt here and the extent to which that doubt impacts on how confident one can be about the research, or if one of the camps is a Chicken Little. [For what it is worth, I really don’t believe that Wastell and White are Chicken-Littling here. But I am no neuroscientist]

What I learn recently is that whilst the judiciary were all of course sent the FJB research (on the basis that finally, the Courts were going to be given some research on which decisions could safely and properly be taken)

they have now also been sent, without comment, the counter critique of Wastell and White.

Specifically, they were sent THIS document, which was produced for a conference organised by counsels chambers, 14 Grays Inn. As what I am doing here is linking to their website featuring it, and naming that 14 Grays Inn produced it and Wastell and White authored it, I don’t believe I am treading on anyone’s toes re authorship or copyright (but will take down the link if people object)

I think it is pretty important that people who are arguing cases in front of Judges know what research material the Court has been sent, and it may help to know that all Judges have been provided with access to both the FJB research AND this paper from 14 Grays Inn which critiques it.

http://www.14graysinnsquare.co.uk/The_childs_time_frame_%20a_neuro-scientific_perspective.pdf

What of course they DO NOT have, is any objective independent peer review of both documents, to answer the questions I have set out before. Which effectively makes the research fairly useless. We are left with the stereotypical TV presenter summary of “well, the controversy rages on”

I wonder if the same is going to be true once the FJB publish their research on the level of contact which is desirable for children (yes, it will), or the impact of drug misuse on family life and the ability of parents to recover from drug misuse (yes, probably) and whether if all the Judges are getting are a set of controversial research papers and effectively being told that the science is controversial on all these issues, whether there is any value to it at all?

I was very supportive of the FJB producing some framework research which would answer some vital underpinning questions in child protection, but it seems to me that this has value only if the Courts who are potentially relying on that research have clear understanding of whether that research represents accurately the mainstream thinking of professionals within that field, and where any gaps are that result in the need to be more cautious about certain aspects.

[The 14 Grays Inn paper is worth reading in any event, and I would urge you to do so, if you can find the time. A lot of the neuroscience is similar to already linked to on my earlier two blogs, but there is some new stuff. The “Error at the Door” piece about initial assessment is really very good]

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Posted in family justice modernisation, research and tagged does the brain recover from neglect, Family Justice Board, impact of neglect on children, impact of neglect on infants, impact of neglect on the brain, neglect, neurology, neuroscience, paediatric neuroscience, plasticity, research, wastell, white. Bookmark the permalink.

Rubric’s revenge

Posted on August 2, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

I wrote yesterday about the murkiness and lack of clarity of what a parent can or can’t say post proceedings, particularly in a case where they were successful and the Court found that the LA had treated them badly.

And most, if not all, of the control of that was pinned on the “Rubric”, the preamble wording under which the Judge releases an anonymised transcript.

Well, lo and behold, here is another one, in the case of Re E (A Child) 2013 (which is a really absorbing case, and I will come back to it, but it will take a while to fully absorb)

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2013/2400.html

This judgment is being distributed on the strict understanding that in any report no person other than the advocates or the solicitors instructing them (and other persons identified by name in the judgment itself) may be identified by name or location and that in particular the anonymity of the children and the adult members of the family must be strictly preserved.

This does not prevent the parents from identifying themselves and the child in the event that they wish to discuss and/or publicise what has happened to them and their family in the course of these proceedings and beforehand.

Now, I am both a lawyer, and a pedantic git, and a lover of labyrinthine legal language, but I have to confess that as a result of those two paragraphs, I would not be certain whether the parents definitely could go on This Morning to talk about their experiences in this case using their real names.

It seems to me that the second paragraph says that they can (in fact, I am fairly sure it does, but fairly sure isn’t great when you are wondering whether what you are about to do is or isn’t a contempt of court), and the second paragraph specifically says that nothing in the first paragraph prevents it, but now I don’t see the point of the first paragraph.

Does the first paragraph (in light of the second) mean nothing more than “nobody else can OUT these parents, but if they choose to OUT THEMSELVES, they can” ? Or does it in effect mean nothing more than “You can publish this transcript of judgment, but you can’t publish it in a way that takes out all the “E” “M” and “F” and replaces those with the real names?”

Or something else entirely?

My gut feeling is that the family, much as with the Websters, are probably permitted by the rubric to publicise the facts of their case, using their own names, if they so wish.

Having said that, whilst the paragraphs suggest that the parents can go onto This Morning and name themselves and the child and talk about the case, paragraph one looks to me like it still bites on the producers of “This Morning” or the editor of the newspaper deciding whether to actually publish the interview in which they do it. Paragraph 2 doesn’t permit the producers or editors to ignore para 1. I don’t think that can be what was intended, but again, if I were being asked by the producers of This Morning whether they were good to go on running the peace, I’d have to say that I think they are okay, if the parents themselves identify their names, but I’m not sure. I definitely wouldn’t put up a caption of the parents names or introduce them – the parents would have to say their own names before Pip and Holly use them.

[For the avoidance of doubt, my own view would be that they SHOULD be able to do this – where the child is as young as this, and they were exonerated of all allegations of harm and there are important lessons for professionals to learn, they should. Only by doing that will a case of this kind, where “Child rescue” overrode “Family Preservation” get the same sort of media attention as say the Daniel Pelka case where things may have gone wrong in the other direction. If we only get media reporting of the State failing to act, and not of the negative consequences of the State taking action, the debate and policy arising from the debate can be badly skewed]

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Posted in case law, transparency and tagged ability of parents to speak to the press, high court, permission given by the Court for parents to tell their story, Re E (a child) 2013, rubric, transparency. Bookmark the permalink.

One flew over the Cuckold’s nest

Posted on August 1, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

The peculiar set of facts of Re M 2013, which hinged on whether a child had been conceived by artificial insemination, or in the traditional way, and if the former, whether the husband of the mother had consented. Also, we touch on the issue of anonymity.

The case is here

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2013/1901.html

We have three players – M, who is the mother of the child, F who provided the gametes for the child’s conception, and H, the husband of the mother. It is fairly to establish that M is the child’s legal mother, but establishing who is the child’s legal father is a bit more difficult.

In essence, F was a man who was a sperm donor on a regular basis. Sometimes he did this by means of artificial insemination (AI), and sometimes by natural intercourse (NI). It was factually agreed that F had been contacted by M and asked to assist with her fertility issue, and that some episodes of NI took place. The issues between the parties were these :-

1. Was the event which led to the conception of the child, AI or NI ?

2. Was the Husband in agreement with this?

Why is that relevant? The Court are clearly about to plunge into very delicate and sensitive matters and things are liable to get (excuse the phrase in this context) sticky.

Well, it is because when the Government decided to legislate and regulate the whole business of insemination done outside of the confines of a relationship or even one night stand, they brought into being the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 (HFEA from now on)

Section 35 of that Act, provides (in very clinical language) that if a woman is married, her husband shall be the legal father of a child produced by artificial insemination with another man’s gametes PROVIDED that he consented to that insemination taking place.

If he did not consent, he is not the child’s legal father. And the donor of the gametes would only be the child’s legal father if he had provided the mother with a notice saying that he consents to be treated as the father of the child AND M has provided him with a notice that she agrees to that. So, a child conceived by AI without the consent of the Husband (H) or biological donor of the gametes (F) agreeing to be treated as the Father would have no legal father.

With me so far?

IF the child was conceived by NI, then the male participant would be the child’s legal father (but would not automatically acquire parental responsibility, unless he was registered on the birth certificate)

In this case, which was heard by Mr Justice Peter Jackson – who is rapidly becoming the “go-to” guy on difficult AI cases, the Mother was claiming that the conception had taken place as a result of NI, and that therefore F was the biological AND legal father. She was also seeking orders for financial support for the child from F, under Schedule One of the Children Act 1989.

It would be fair to say that the role of the Court became less one of determining which of F or M was telling the truth, but which of them, after sifting through the multiple lies that each had told, was the more credible in their overall account. Given that F said the conception was by AI, and M said by NI, one of them must have been telling the truth about the circumstances, and it was, the Judge said, unfortunate that each of them had told so many lies in the proceedings.

These are the lies the Court found that M had told. (The names that I give are names that are within the anonymised transcript, and do not relate to the real names of M, F or H, or the child)

· Examples of Ms M’s deceptions are these:

(1) Her opening e-mail to Mr F stated that she was healthy (she has a medical condition) and that Mr H was excited about donor insemination (he was against it but she hoped to bring him round).

(2) She told Mr F that she had miscarried his child, when she had in fact had a termination.

(3) Her ‘misdirected’ email to a girlfriend, deliberately sent to Mr F, is the work of a fluent fabricator.

(4) Her use of the ‘Andy Hitchings’ name and e-mail account shows a capacity for determined and malevolent action to achieve her ends, and also demonstrates that she will use an alias when it suits her.

(5) I find that she wrote those ‘Andy Hitchings’ emails that she denies writing. Her criterion for accepting or denying authorship was no more than an assessment of the damage that the truth would do to her case.

(6) I find that she probably wrote the ‘Nicole White’ and ‘Edward Mason’ e-mails for the reasons given in Mr F’s opening submissions. She has had two years to prove that these people exist in the face of Mr F’s allegation that they do not, but she has made no attempt to do so.

(7) If I am wrong about point (6), the only plausible alternative is that Ms M conspired with one or more other persons unknown to pursue her campaign against Mr F.

(8) Ms M’s reason for keeping a transcribed log of text messages was that it was as a record for the child. This is unconvincing; a more likely explanation is that she kept the information as a form of insurance.

· I found Ms M to be an unimpressive witness in relation to the above matters and to show no sign of discomfort when caught in an obvious lie. She freely stated that she is motivated by her own need for Mr F to be punished.

And then these are the lies that F told

· Examples of Mr F’s deceptions are these:

(1) His calculating betrayal of his girlfriends, to whom he made promises that he was no longer engaging in sperm donation, and his unabashed dishonesty in concealing his overall activities from recipients with whom he entered into relationships.

(2) His casual untruthfulness on his website profiles about the number of children that he had fathered, lies that would only work to his benefit by disguising a level of hyperactivity that might have deterred responsible approaches.

(3) His deliberately misleading first statement, in which he trumpets the rules of the website as being ‘AI-only’ in an effort to create the impression that this was the case here, when in fact he had been engaging in and advertising sexual activity through the website for years.

(4) His untruthful evidence in these proceedings and to the CSA that he had not had sexual intercourse with Ms M until December 2010 or January 2011, when on his own case it occurred in October 2010.

(5) His gratuitously inaccurate statement that sexual intercourse with Ms M began ‘at her instigation’.

(6) His denial of certain text messages to and from Ms M, taking the same selective tactical approach as she has done.

· As to the last matter, the log of text messages was produced by Ms M in an unsatisfactory form (allegedly transcribed in edited form from notes that no longer exist of texts that have been ‘lost’). Having exercised due caution in the light of Ms M’s general dishonesty, I nevertheless find that the record can be viewed as a reasonably reliable journal of this form of communication between the couple. The messages have the spontaneous and often inconsequential flavour of real life, are congruent with the content of the contemporaneous emails, and are in my view beyond even Ms M’s powers of fabrication. Moreover, had she wanted to invent evidence, she would probably have inserted some direct and unambiguous reference to sexual activity, but there is none. Many texts are accepted by Mr F, but only where they do him no damage.

· Mr F’s evidence was clearly given, but he had clearly taken the strategic decision to tell the truth where possible and to lie where necessary. He at least conveyed some impression that he would have been more comfortable telling the truth if circumstances had not prevented it.

The Judge then had to weigh up, which of them on balance was telling the truth on the central issue of conception, taking into account that the burden of proof was upon M as the applicant

· On the central question of the manner of this child’s conception, I have reached the clear conclusion that Ms M’s evidence is greatly to be preferred to that of Mr F. My reasons are these:

(1) Her account of the sexual activity is detailed and has been consistently maintained. It was unshaken during her evidence.

(2) As a straw in the wind, her answer to an unexpected question about what happened to the AI equipment after the first meeting (which was that she kept bringing but not using it) had the ring of truth.

(3) Allowing for the difficulty faced by any witness in breathing life into a denial, Mr F’s evidence on the issue lacked any real conviction.

(4) His new-found certainty that the first occasion of sex was in late October is inconsistent with his previous accounts and best explained by his having decided to sail as close to the wind as he could in terms of dates.

(5) If the first occasion of sex occurred in October it would have been at one address: if it was in December or January, it would have been at another, Mr F having moved in the meantime. A mistake about dates might be explained: a mistake about venue cannot be accounted for so easily.

(6) My findings about Mr F’s unreliability as a witness are of course relevant.

(7) While of no great importance, it would be a curiosity that the child was conceived by AI at a meeting that was the immediate predecessor of his parents’ very first sexual activity.

(8) The coy and flirtatious tone of their emails and texts from the start suggests that the couple’s relationship had swiftly progressed far beyond AI. The approach seems to have been to communicate in way that was not explicit, chiming with the wish to keep the affair hidden from their partners. Of interest, the tone of the texts and emails is no different before and after October 2010.

(9) I attach no real significance to the use of the term ‘donor’ by either parent when it is clear that this was used interchangeably in their minds for AI and NI. As Mr F put it, ‘I call it donation by sex or receptacle’.

(10) I reject Mr F’s case that a simple friendship and closeness developed between himself and Ms M arising from the intimate nature of AI. The sheer amount of time the couple spent together in a variety of private places from April 2010 onwards is a strong indicator that they were meeting for more than repeated AI.

(11) Mr H believed from an early stage that his wife was having an affair, and I believe that he had good grounds for thinking so.

(12) On the evidence, Mr F did not commonly engage in extended continuous asexual relationships with the women he met through the website. He has an unmistakable track record of inveigling or encouraging recipients into engaging in sexual activity with him from the very first meeting. Ms M’s account of Mr F making a pass at her during the first meeting is consistent with descriptions given by others. Of note, Mr F accepted that he had given her the option of AI or NI within minutes of their first meeting, which was highly inappropriate when she was a stranger who had come for AI.

(13) I accept that Mr F first became involved in licensed donation altruistically and even now, I do not discount a residual element of altruism in his make-up or forget that there are many much-wanted children alive today as a result of his efforts. However, I am clear that in relation to his website activity his mainspring has been to meet his own needs, at least at a sexual level. This is seen by his behaviour in 2007, when he advertised himself in graphic terms as willing to participate in a ‘breeding party’, i.e. a male-dominated orgy designed to get a woman pregnant, though there is no suggestion that he actually took part in such activity. Likewise, he referred in evidence to an occasion when he engaged in sexual activity with both members of a lesbian pair who had approached him via the website.

(14) The fact that Mr F is bound in his professional life by a clear code of ethics makes the risks he was taking the more surprising. His prolific sexual activity with recipients amounted to a brazen flouting of the rules of the website, such as they were. In one relevant period of 2-3 months alone, he was on his own account having sex with three women and providing AI to two others. Most of these contacts had to be kept secret from the other women involved. The sheer logistical challenge alongside his professional life will have been a burden that he would have been likely to have laid down if he had not been driven on by some degree of compulsion. He even kept up and refreshed a posting on a different website, from which he never received any custom over a period of years, and despite the volume of applications the main website was reliably producing.

(15) I reject Mr F’s case that Ms M main motivation is financial, but accept that much of her behaviour is explained by a desire to damage him in any way she can as a way of getting redress for his deeds and his lies.

Thus finding that F was the biological and legal parent of the child, the child having been conceived by natural intercourse.

Where things get really rich, was the application for costs

Ms M seeks an order that Mr F should pay her costs, while Mr H seeks an order that Mr F should pay his costs on an indemnity basis. Mr H’s costs, it will be recalled, come to £13,000 and Ms M’s to £81,000, of which £61,000 is publicly funded.

Well, I see some merit in H asking for it, but after those findings about the pack of lies that M told, asking for a costs order required some bravery. It wasn’t successful.

The issue of anonymity was touched upon, and it is relevant in view of the current debate and the last blog piece that I wrote. Underlining here is mine.

· Prohibited steps application Mr F seeks an order in these terms:

1. No party may, without the permission of the court, disclose to any person other than their respective legal advisors any of the evidence, oral or written, which has been adduced during these proceedings.

2. No party may disclose to any person other than their respective legal advisors, close friends and family members, or medical professionals treating either themselves or the child any information relating to the circumstances of the conception of the child.

3. For the avoidance of doubt, paragraphs 1 and 2 of this order prohibit disclosure of any information covered by those paragraphs in any of the following ways:

a. By email to any person other than those included in paragraph 1 of this order;

b. By posting the information on any website or internet forum;

c. By publishing the information via Twitter, Facebook or any other social media;

d. By disclosing any of the information to any representative of the Press.

4. Other than specifically provided for in this order, any disclosure which would otherwise have been permitted by Family Procedure Rules 2010, r.12.73 or 12.75 is prohibited unless the party wishing to make such disclosure has obtained the permission of the court.

· Mr F seeks this order to prevent what is described as prurient interest in the circumstances of the child’s conception. He points to the findings about Ms M’s past behaviour in relation to third parties as heightening this risk. He is anxious to protect his personal position, that of the child and that of third parties, including other children fathered by him. He fears that the financial proceedings may prompt Ms M to renew her public campaign against him.

· Ms M, who initially appeared attracted by the idea of such an order, now opposes the application. She considers that she should be free to discuss such information or desist from doing so as she sees fit in so far as is otherwise permitted by law.

· FPR 2010 r.12.73 and r.12.75 protect information arising from the proceedings, either by way of written or oral evidence, or by description of what occurred in court, but at the same time permit disclosure of information relating to the proceedings in defined circumstances, which do not include communication to the public at large. However, in the absence of a specific order, there is nothing to prevent anyone talking privately or publicly about matters that do not originate from within the proceedings: the mere fact that information arising independent of the proceedings is then referred to within the proceedings does not mean that it cannot continue to be spoken of.

· In this case, Mr F applies for greater restrictions than those imposed by the rules. In balancing the interests that arise under Articles 8 and 10, I am clear that this is not a case in which it would be appropriate for the court to make an order of this kind. Looking at the matter from the point of view of the child, I doubt that the sort of transient publicity that might follow either of the parties speaking publicly would have any real effect on his welfare or of other children. This is not an encouragement to anyone, and in particular Ms M, to go to the press. On the contrary, all parties would no doubt be wise to desist from washing dirty linen in public, but that is a matter for them, and not for the court to regulate in the circumstances of this case. I am not influenced by Ms M’s change of stance: had the parties been united in the application, I would still have refused it.

And thus the judgment is published, with names anonymised, with the standard rubric (see the last blog post) about anyone wishing to make use of the judgment having to do so on the basis that no information leading to the identification of the parties will be provided.

I know that some of my readers, and some of the media, and population at large, take the view that anonymising the judgments is a step too far, and that the names should just be made public save for the most drastic of circumstances.

But imagine, if you will, that this judgment, which is up online and can be viewed by anyone who looks for it, named the child, F, M and H, giving their real names. Anyone in the child’s social circle could read it now or in the future, and know the whole grisly story of the conception and the lies , manipulation and deception that both of his biological parents were involved in. And could tell the child that , or tease or bully the child with that information. Imagine you are the child, and ten years hence you type your name into Google, and THIS judgment is what comes up. And you see your mother’s name, and the name of her husband, who you thought was your father?

This is of course, nowhere near the worst things that are contained within family court judgments; and it is for that reason that I would support publication of anonymised judgments (hopefully with some clear guidance on what can or can’t be done with them) but not for the routine naming of those involved.

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Posted in case law, transparency and tagged anonymity, artificial insemination, HFEA, human fertilisation and embryology act, husband consenting to artificial insemination, paternity issues, removing names from judgments, schedule one of the children act, transparency, who is the father in an artificial insemination case. Bookmark the permalink.

“Rubric’s cube”

Posted on August 1, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

Anonymity and human interest stories. And Re K – part 3

There’s an interesting new judgment up on Bailli – Re K (A Child: Wardship: Publicity) 2013

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2013/B11.html

I can’t write much about the case because of a tangential involvement, but it raises some interesting principles, particularly given where we are with the President’s consultation on transparency and publishing anonymised judgments as a matter of course. So, I’ll be discussing the issues in the case, rather than the merits of what the parents were arguing.

I wrote about the care proceedings here

https://suesspiciousminds.com/2012/07/30/forensic-ferrets-or-standing-in-the-way-of-beyond-parental-control/

And a later follow-up on the Court of Appeal decision that Wardship was the right answer for the child, not the Care Order made at first instance.

The case I am most pleased about this year

Keeping things very short, the parents in the case obtained a judgment that was very very critical of the Local Authority and the way that the Local Authority had treated them. The parents say that this has continued, even after those damning judgments. This was obviously something that the press were interested in, and because the judgment was reported and available on Bailli in an anonymised transcript, the press could legitimately report the facts of the case; PROVIDED that they did not name or take steps that would lead someone to be able to identify the true names of the people concerned.

So far so good. But of course, the Press are more interested in the human element of the story, and it becomes a more interesting story if they are able to report and the readers are able to read, how the mother and father in that case felt about their experiences – what was it like to be in that position, how did it feel, how did they have to struggle . The bare facts, without any human element to bring those bare facts to life is a less compelling story.

We are people, and we are interested in people, not merely bare facts. If you are Holly Willoughby (and if you are, I love your work, ma’am) then discussing this case on “This Morning” is a damn sight more interesting and compelling if the parents in the case are on the sofa next to you, or even in a video-link as silouhettes that you can interact with.

So, in this case, the parents were keen to campaign about their experiences, whilst preserving anonymity, and spread what many people might consider to be a vital two pronged message about family justice – 1. That professionals can get things badly wrong and 2. That by fighting your case properly you can nonetheless achieve justice through the courts. And even, the third – that doing that can be exhausting, draining, expensive and it takes many many months before the truth is reached.

If that can be done whilst preserving the anonymity of the child, that would be a good thing. These parents have a judgment setting out the facts and they in essence won their case and it is no longer an argument about how the Local Authority behaved but an established fact that they behaved badly towards these parents.

Now, in order to disseminate that message, the parents really need to be able to speak out, to give interviews, to give comments, to give statements. Can they do that, on the existing law, provided that they don’t identify the child ?

I’m going to use the analogy of Bruce Wayne and Batman here, to make it a bit easier to follow. Bruce Wayne can never go on television and say that he is Batman. Batman can never go on television and say that he is Bruce Wayne. But Batman can go on television and talk about what it is like to be Batman – PROVIDED he doesn’t say that he is Bruce Wayne. (I’m sorry if you don’t know who Bruce Wayne or Batman are, the analogy won’t help you at all. Think instead, that the parent wants to be on tv saying “I am Mr X, from this particular case about Mr X” but that he doesn’t want to say “I am [My real name] and I am also Mr X, from this particular case about Mr X”)

In this analogy, the published judgment is all about Batman, and talks about Batman and never mentions Bruce Wayne, the identity of Bruce Wayne is completely concealed in the judgment and cannot be disclosed.

So, can a parent go on television and say “I am the parent in this reported case, here’s my story – I AM BATMAN” as long as they do so as Batman, and don’t mention that they are Bruce Wayne? If they would be recognised from a visual image, they might have to be dressed as Batman (metaphorically – some element of disguise that stops them being readily identified)

That all seems to hinge on what is called the ‘rubric’ – that is effectively the basis on which the anonymised judgment is made public. In this case, it said this :-

‘The judgment is being distributed on the strict understanding that in any report no person other than the advocates (and other persons identified by name in the judgment itself) may be identified by name or location and that in particular the anonymity of the children and the adult members of their family must be strictly preserved.’

So, the parents in the case manifestly and plainly can’t go on television and say “Hello everyone, I am Bruce Wayne, and I am also Batman” ( I am the Father in the celebrated case of X, and my real name is whatevertherealnameis).

But can they go on television and say “I am the father in the celebrated case of X, where the father is referred to as Batman. I am Batman”

The parents sought clarification from the Court as to what was acceptable, of course not wanting to breach any confidentiality or commit contempt of Court. From the point of view of statutory law, them going on television as Batman, to talk about being Batman was fine.

The whole notion of the rubric is a bit perplexing. It of course isn’t a creature of statute, although it borrows the words and the concepts of those pieces of statute that provide a cloak of anonymity to the identity of the true names and identifying information about the parties and more importantly the child. So, is the rubric anything more than just words – does it have any effect in law?

This is what the President said in a reported case, which touched on what the legal standing of the rubric was :-

The legal effect of this rubric is uncertain. That is an issue that was considered by Munby J in Re B, X Council v B and Others [2008] 1 FLR 482. At para [12] he said:

‘Lurking behind the current application there is, in fact, an important issue as to the precise effect of the rubric where, as here, there is no injunction in place. I do not propose to consider that issue. I will proceed on the assumption, though I emphasise without deciding the point, that the rubric is binding on anyone who seeks to make use of a judgment to which it is attached.’

[I admire that chutzpah of identifying that there is an important issue and then without drawing breath deciding not to consider that issue]

That therefore, is that, for the time being. Where a judgment is published on the basis of a rubric, those wanting to make use of the information contained in the judgment are bound by it. (I wonder idly, whether once the Presidents changes come in, and judgments are routinely published, whether rubrics will still be issued – it will no longer be a situation of the Court generously agreeing to publish the judgment on the basis of a rubric, but a blanket assumption that all judgments would ordinarily be published)

But that still leave us, and more importantly, the parents, in doubt as to whether they can speak as Batman, and wearing Batman’s cloak of anonymity, providing they do nothing that lets slip that they are REALLY Bruce Wayne.

The LA in this case were arguing that the parents were prohibited from declaring that they were Batman, and that they could give interviews saying that they had been involved in A CASE but could not point towards them being the parents in THIS CASE (which of course would be an insanely dull interview)

. It is worth also reading the judgment for the issue of the child’s very strong views that publicity of any kind about her case was not something she wanted and considered would be damaging.

I have to say, that the judgment could be plainer towards the end, but it seems to me that the Judge comes down in support of the parents being able to declare that they were Batman (i.e that they were the parents in THIS CASE and could talk about THIS case, as long as they did so in that character, and not using their real identities or anything that might identify them)

· So far as concerns the actions of this local authority, in my earlier judgment I set out a catalogue of poor social work practice, of failure to engage appropriately with these parents, of failure to keep them informed, of arriving at hasty, ill-informed and flawed judgments about them and of marginalising them. Against that background, not only do the parents have a legitimate interest in telling their story, the public has a right to hear their story.

· The case also raises wider issues of equal if not greater importance, particularly when seen in the context of the current public debate about delays in adoption and the shortage of prospective adopters. As I noted earlier these wider issues include, for example, the importance of providing prospective adopters with full, detailed and relevant information about a child’s background before placing her for adoption, the level of post-adoption support available to adopters of children with complex needs and challenging behaviours, the vulnerability of late adoptions to placement breakdown, the significance and impact of RAD on a child’s behaviour and the therapeutic support required by such children. These are all issues which are of genuine and legitimate public interest.

Conclusions

· In A v Ward at para [133] Munby LJ made the point that “The maintenance of public confidence in the judicial system is central to the values which underlie both Art 6 and Art 10 and something which…has to be brought into account as a very weighty factor in any application of the balancing exercise.” In this case I am in no doubt that the balance comes down in favour of allowing the parents to discuss the case with the media.

· Miss Moseley seeks to persuade me that I should attach conditions to any permission I grant to the parents. I have given that careful consideration. I have come to the conclusion that the rubric set out at the beginning of my earlier judgment is sufficient. That rubric makes it plain that in any media reporting K, her parents and her adoptive sisters may not be identified by name or location. The additional requirement that “in particular the anonymity of the children and the adult members of their family must be strictly preserved” means that the media must take particular care not to report information not contained in the published judgment if that information may lead to the identification of K and her parents.

There remain gray areas, and this will become more and more pressing once judgments are routinely available.

What if, whilst giving their interview in the cloak of Batman, a neighbour recognises their voice or their style of speech? What if that neighbour comes up to them and says “Hey, Bruce Wayne, I saw Batman being interviewed on tv today – that was you! You’re Batman”

Is it a breach of the rubric for the parent to say “Yes, you’re right, that was me, I am Batman?”

Is it a breach if the neighbour then tweets “Hey everyone, you know that bloke who was on This Morning – the Batman guy. He’s really my neighbour Bruce Wayne”?

[My last substantial law blog was about defamation, and here’s an interesting one, which ties into the next one I’m going to write. If I, or someone like me, writes about a person named as Mr X in a published judgment, and I say things about Mr X which go further than the judgment, those things are capable of being defamatory. But they are only defamatory if some of the readers know who Mr X is. Given that he is anonymous, am I only defaming the legal creature of Mr X, rather than the real human being who lies behind that pseudonym, whose true identity is not known to anyone? Can the real Mr X sue me for defamation? Is he breaching the rubric by sending me a solicitors letter saying “Our client Bruce Wayne, who is the Mr X you refer to in your article, is of the view that your words about him were defamatory” ? Is all hypothetical, since I don’t go further than the judgments, but I of course do have my own opinion when I join the dots of the judgments as to what sort of person Mr X might be, I just don’t voice it. I do wonder though, whether it is possible for me to defame Bruce Wayne by what I say about Mr X, when nobody knows that Bruce Wayne and Mr X are the same person]

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Posted in case law, transparency and tagged anonymised transcript of judgment, can a parent give interviews about care proceedings, confidentiality in family court, contempt of court, identifying subject of court proceedings, press and care proceedings, reporting care proceedings, rubric, transcript of judgment, transparency. Bookmark the permalink.

“Bechtel the Future”

Posted on August 1, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

A non-law discussion about the portrayal of women in fiction and the Bechtel Test.

Will try to keep this one short, to cater for those readers who prefer short blogs.

Some thoughts have been percolating in my head for a while, and they came together when I was reading an article on whether the new Doctor Who should be a woman. The two camps basically set out their stall this way – Stay a Man went with the fact that Dr Who is a strong male character who tackles problems by listening and thinking and talking and not by blowing things up or shooting them or punching them or shouting, and is actually a damn good role model for young boys. The Change to a Woman camp said that it was apparent as a woman watching television, particularly as a mother of young girls, how few shows there are where the females represented are anything other than love interests, shrews or helpless females there to push the plot along by being captured or needing to be saved or have the plot explained to them.

And the latter struck a chord with me. I become increasingly exasperated when in film after film, there is one female character and her role is to look pretty, perhaps be a bit sassy, and then get put in jeopardy (often by her own foolish behaviour) so that the hero has to save her. It’s a real throwback to both the playground and the culture of the 1950s. Or even way back to silent films with women getting tied to railway tracks by moustache-twirling villains. Haven’t we moved a bit beyond that? Can’t films reflect a bit more of the reality that women are more than lipstick and getting captured? Even the shows where the female character is smart and independent and capable (think Lois Lane, Emilia Fox in Silent Witness, Gwyneth Paltrow in Iron Man) they still invariably end up being captured and needing to be rescued. The two dominant characteristics of women in fiction are Sexy and Helpless.

I work predominantly with women – it’s either 80-20 or even 90-10, and those woman have the spread and range of personalities, characteristics, features, interests, passions that you would expect of people. I wouldn’t describe a single one of the women that I know and work with as their dominant feature being that they are “helpless”.

And then, pondering this, I came across a nice little test, called the Bechtel test. It was coined in a comic strip in 1985. The test is this

Take the piece of fiction – a film, a TV show, a book and ask these 3 questions

1. 1. Does it have at least two women in it?

2. 2. Do those two women have a conversation?

3. 3. Is that conversation about something other than men?

That’s SUCH a low test. Half of the world’s population is female, so unless your work of fiction has barely any characters in it, there should be two women, it would be natural for them to talk, and you’d have to be the most old-fashioned sexist jerk in the world (the sort of person who might speak to Jeremy Clarkson and have Clarkson say “God mate, that’s a bit sexist, the world isn’t like that”) to think that women can only have conversations about men. It is almost impossible to concieve of any piece of fiction (unless set in an all girl’s school or a nunnery) failing that test if you swapped “women” and “men” over.

If the answer to all three is yes, the fiction has passed the “Bechtel test” which is the most ludicrously low bar.

The sad thing is (and it’s really the point of the test, to illustrate this) most of what we see and consume in terms of films, tv and books, don’t pass the Bechtel test.

If I was pulling out an episode of a tv show at random and being very confident that it would pass the Bechtel test, I’d be confident about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Coronation Street, probably Friends, probably Mad Men, probably Game of Thrones and relatively little else that I can think of. (Medical dramas being the exception, because the female doctors get the glory of asking female patients “Where does it hurt?” or “Have you had this happen to you before” thus passing the test, similiarly with cop shows, where a female officer says to a female suspect “What time did you leave the flat?” or such. Not really conversations though….)

Heck, take a show like Sex and the City – which is aimed at a female audience, and has four female leads and the show is 90% about those women talking, I think there are some episodes that would pass the Bechtel test, but I wouldn’t bet money that any one drawn out at random would.

Back to the Future, a film I absolutely love, doesn’t pass the Bechtel test – women characters in it get to say about twenty words to each other, and none of it about anything other than men.

What fictional world are we consuming where either only one character gets to be a woman, the women in the world don’t talk to each other and on the rare occasions that they do, they don’t talk about anything other than men?

Now you know about the test, just have a think about it for the next film you watch or tv show that’s on. How happy do you feel about a world in which fifty per cent of the population get shown in fiction in a way that doesn’t get past such a ludicrously low bar.

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Posted in stuff that isn't law at all and tagged back to the future, bechtel test, buffy the vampire slayer, dr who, iron man, silent witness, women in fiction. Bookmark the permalink.

“I’ll sue you for every penny you’ve got!”

Posted on July 29, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

Has the principle of judicial proceedings immunity been eroded following Singh v Moorlands Primary School 2013? And if so, how? What CAN you do if someone lies about you in Court?

Ah, the resonant phrase “I’ll sue you for every penny you’ve got” – it was fairly common place in my school days to hear this as a vehicle for avoiding a fight that the speaker thought they might lose – the retort for a fight invitation that you think you might win is of course “Four o’clock, school gates – no karate”

As an adult, the times I tend to hear it now is when a person takes umbrage to something contained in the court papers – more often than not a grandfather who is appalled that the parent has made allegations about their childhood, and threatens to sue everyone for defamation.

Such threats are of course idle – firstly, because there is no legal aid for defamation and bringing a case is liable to cost you many thousands of pounds with no guarantee of success [My stock response when I dabbled in that branch of law was “You want to sue someone for defamation – how do you feel about selling your house to pay for that?”], and secondly because of a principle called “judicial proceedings immunity”

This was established way back in 1585 – Cutler v Dixon.

This means that no action for defamation can be brought against a person for something said in evidence in Court or in a witness statement prepared for Court proceedings – nor for something said in preparation of such evidence (i.e you can’t sue the mother for saying to her solicitor “This is what my dad did to me when I was little, and I want you to put it in my statement”, or counsel who prepares a document saying “mother alleges that the maternal grandfather abused her when she was a child”)

Here’s a neat little summary of why the principle exists

“The reasons why immunity is traditionally conferred upon witnesses in respect of evidence given in court, are in order that they may give their evidence fearlessly and to avoid a multiplicity of actions in which the value or truth of their evidence would be tried over again. Moreover, the trial process contains in itself, in the subjection to cross-examination and confrontation with other evidence, some safeguard against careless, malicious or untruthful evidence”

Of course, if you could sue a person who said in Court something defamatory about you, then it would be impossible to conduct any criminal trials; since in all criminal trials the Prosecution have to say to the defendant in effect “you’re a thief, aren’t you?” and the Defence have to say to the Prosecution witnesses in effect “when you say you saw my client steal something, you are lying” – and after the verdict, if the Defendant is guilty, the prosecution witnesses could sue the Defence barrister, and if not guilty, the defendant could sue the Prosecution barrister who called him a thief (or worse). So you need to be able to put the case and deal with the allegations without every case descending afterwards into civil claims for defamation against the losing side.

If you were in the UK in 2012, you may well remember that an MP was able to sidestep all the super-injunctions that were in place by naming the person they were protecting, whilst the MP was in Parliament. Something an MP says in Parliament has the same sort of protection – you can’t sue an MP for defamation in Parliament (although of course if an MP started abusing this to start for example making allegations that x or y was a war criminal or ‘friend of Jimmy Saville’, there would probably be internal disciplinary issues). Judicial proceedings immunity is a bit like the immunity an MP has when speaking in Parliament – although not so absolute, as we shall see later.

Anyway, Singh v Moorlands Primary School 2013 is a civil case, specifically an employment one, so it may have not appeared on the radar of family lawyers, but might have some significance.

In this case, the claimant, Ms Singh had been a head teacher and had become embroiled against her will in disciplinary proceedings and a key witness against her was a woman named Sue Heath. Ms Singh had been anticipating that Sue Heath might in fact give evidence on her behalf, supporting her case, and for that reason formed the view that it had been pressure by the Council that had made Sue Heath file a false witness statement.

Ms Singh claimed that the Council had put pressure on Sue Heath to file a damning witness statement, and further that the witness statement was a tissue of lies. She then claimed that the Council acting in this way (pressurising a witness to file a negative and inaccurate statement) was a breach of their duty towards her as an employee and it thus formed part of her case.

(I.e it wasn’t just a question of cross-examining Sue Heath and getting the truth out of her, but an allegation that the very act of the statement having been prepared in the way it was formed a civil claim against the Council, Ms Singh’s employers)

The Council argued that this allegation ought not to be investigated nor form any part of the employment tribunal, because their actions in preparing the case and witness statements all had the shield of judicial proceedings immunity, and the claimant could not try to pierce that shield.

The Court reminded itself that expert witnesses can now be sued for negligence [Smart v The Forensic Service 2013 and earlier cases] and an advocate can be sued for negligence arising from their preparation and conduct of a case [Arthur JS Hall and Co v Simons 2002] and that therefore a blanket immunity could no longer be said to be the case.

The position that a witness and those involved in preparing the witness statement and advancing their case is protected from claims of defamation arising from the evidence remains valid, but that judicial proceedings immunity did not necessarily cover all other matters. For example, a claim could potentially be brought for malicious prosecution where those bringing the prosecution knew that it was based on falsehood.

[The tort of malicious prosecution – a pretty obscure one, now can apply to civil proceedings as well as criminal ones – Crawford Adjusters v Sagicor General Insurance (Cayman) Ltd 2013]

There’s an interesting, if esoteric debate about whether a police officer who gives evidence that he found a brick of cannabis in the defendants possession is entitled to judicial proceedings immunity, or whether he is immune from a defamation claim about what he SAID in evidence, but not immune from a civil claim if it emerges that he planted the brick of cannabis there. The Court took the view that what is said and done in the assembly of the case is covered by judicial proceedings immunity BUT NOT where what is done is the deliberate fabrication of evidence.

The Court of Appeal thus determined that Ms Singh was permitted to run the argument at Employment Tribunal that the Council had breached their duties as an employer by compelling or pressurising witnesses to give false evidence against her. (That’s very different, of course, to the Court deciding that this WAS what the Council had done, merely permitting the argument and enquiry to be part of the case)

The distinction isn’t perhaps the easiest to follow, but it seems that a witness or party is protected from defamation claims that might otherwise arise from their evidence or preparation of their evidence, but MIGHT not be protected against claims of negligence, employment duties or malicious prosecution.

I think getting one of those claims off the ground in a family case would be tricky. The claimant would have to have WON the family case and won it pretty overwhelmingly (not “finely balanced”) and to have got findings that the witnesses were not merely mistaken or inaccurate, or not accepted but had actually lied and made false and malicious claims. And then you have to have the other side actually be people who have money, to make it worth suing them.

And then the amount of compensation you have to be capable of winning be worth the costs of the litigation it would take to go and get it (this is colloquially termed “is the game worth the candle?”) as there’s no point spending £25,000 on legal costs to try to win £10,000 compensation.

Malicious prosecution, tempting as it may sound, only allows the successful claimant to recover economic losses in damages; there isn’t a compensation for emotional hardship or suffering, which would really be more applicable in family law cases.

And then, gulp, you read what the Privy Council said about bringing a claim for malicious prosecution in the Crawford Adjusters case – underlining mine :-

Lord Sumption suggests that the fact that few may succeed will not deter the many who will allege malice. I cannot share his confidence in that assertion. True it may be, as he suggests, that litigation sharpens men’s conviction of their own rightness and their suspicion of their opponents’ motives. But those who launch proceedings rarely do so without regard to the possibility of failure. And the possibility of failure in all but the clearest cases of malicious prosecution is very real indeed.

[That’s pretty transparent Judge code for “you’ve got very little chance of being able to prove malicious prosecution in all but the most blindingly obvious cases”]

So overall, your remedy for someone lying about you in Court is to prove them wrong, and as a result persuade the Court to find in your favour. There isn’t that much the law will do for you beyond that.

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Posted in case law and tagged can you be libelled in court papers, can you sue someone for what they say in court, defamation and family law, defamation in a witness statement, defamation in court, judicial proceedings immunity, libel and family law, protection for witnesses, slander and family law. Bookmark the permalink.

“You’ve lost your lipgloss honey”

Posted on July 22, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

Whether the test is “wrong” or “plainly wrong” for an Appeal, and we shall know definitively after Re BS, when deciding whether to give permission, where is the bar set? What does the appellant have to demonstrate in order to get permission to appeal?

The High Court looked at this in Re H v G (adoption appeal) 2013 http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2013/2136.html

And the Judge, Mr Justice Peter Jackson, pretty much layeth the smackdown on the gloss that was put on the test by the judge who granted permission for the appeal (I won’t name said Judge, but you can read it in the judgment, which was delivered on 13 June 2013 and NOT as the transcript would seem to indicate 13th June 2013 hint hint)

The test, which appears at Rule 30.3(7) of the Family Procedure Rules 2010 is that an applicant must show ‘a real prospect of success.’

As so often happens with any sort of test laid down by Statute or statutory instruments, judges tend to add their own gloss on it, and that gloss then gets adopted and absorbed into part of the legal test. We had a VERY long-running issue with this on the “soundbite” of “imminent risk of serious harm” and whether that was, or was not a gloss; and if so, whether it should or should not be followed.

What happened in THIS case is that the Judge who granted permission put a gloss on the “real prospect of success” as meaning that the case wasn’t “fanciful” or “capricious, whimsical or absurd”

(Of course, if that gloss were accepted, the test for the appellant would be relatively low, meaning really that there were just SOME argument to be had, rather than that the grounds for appeal showed a real prospect of success)

The High Court Judge hearing the appeal felt that this ought to be nipped in the bud.

I respectfully suggest that to allow permission to appeal in any case where the application is not capricious, whimsical or absurd is to set the threshold too low. It does not, in my view, give effect to the rule that simply requires a real prospect of success to be shown.

The Judge then referred to the case of CR v SR 2013, which dealt carefully with this point

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2013/1155.html

In THAT case, the Court were dealing with a debate as to whether “real prospect of success” meant that the appellant seeking permission had to show that it was more likely than not that they would succeed in the appeal.

(So in CR v SR 2013, the issue was whether the ‘gloss’ on the test pushed it higher, and made it more difficult for the appellant, and in Re H v G 2013, whether the ‘gloss’ on the test pushed it lower and made it easier for the appellant. I have again removed the name of the Judge who originally set the gloss that CR v SR was addressing, cough cough, same Judge glossed the test in two different directions)

The “more likely than not to succeed gloss” was set in NLW v. ARC [2012] 2 FLR 129.

Our anonymised judge says, in para. 8: (underlining mine)

“In his skeleton argument Mr. Chamberlayne has suggested that the object of the test is only to weed out the hopeless appeal. I would not go that far. I would suggest that the concept of a real prospect of success must mean, generally speaking, that it is incumbent on an appellant to demonstrate that it is more likely than not that the appeal will be allowed at the substantive hearing. Anything less than a 50/50 threshold would of course, by linguistic definition, mean that it is improbable that the appeal will be allowed and in such circumstances it would be hard to say that any appeal had a real prospect of success; rather, it could only be said as a matter of logic that it had a real prospect of failure“.

The Judge in CR v SR disagreed, and relied on some Court of Appeal authority to prove the point.

In a later decision, AV v. RM (Appeal) [2012] 2 FLR 709, Moor J. reaches a different conclusion to that of [NAME REMOVED]. as to the meaning of the phrase “a reasonable prospect of success”. He says at paras. 9 and 10 of his judgment:

“9) It has been on said on many occasions that judges should not place a judicial gloss on the words of either the statute or the rules. With the greatest of respect to [NAME REMOVED]., it may well have been that this aspect was not argued fully before him and that his attention was not, in particular, drawn to a decision of the Court of Appeal, of Tanfern Limited v. Cameron MacDonald & Anor. [2000] 1 WLR 1311, in which Brooke LJ. said the following (at para.21):

“21. Permission to appeal will only be given where the court considers that an appeal would have a real prospect of success or that there is some other compelling reason why the appeal should be heard. Lord Woolf MR has explained that the use of the word of ‘real’ means that the prospect of success must be realistic rather than fanciful [see Swain v. Hillman, The Times, 4th November 1999; Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Transcript No. 1732 of 1999].

10) The test for permission to appeal is, of course, exactly the same in the Court of Appeal. It, therefore, follows that this court is bound by Tanfern Limited v. Cameron-MacDonald and I consider that there should be no gloss placed on the words of the rules other than to say that ‘real’ means that the prospect of success must be realistic rather than fanciful”.

So there you have it, a Judge considering permission to appeal (and that can of course include the trial Judge who made the decision, as that is the first port of call when seeking permission to appeal) hears the application to appeal and decides

Does this appeal have a real prospect of success, OR is there some other compelling reason why the appeal should be heard?

And does not interpret “Real prospect of success” as being either – more likely than not, OR that it is not capricious absurd or fanciful.

Of course, if BS confirms that the test for almost every appeal in children cases, following the Supreme Court in Re B, is has the appellant shown that the Judge was “wrong” rather than “plainly wrong”, there MUST be an argument that the ability of the appellant to have a real prospect of success must increase, as the test is lowered.

Perhaps the Court of appeal in Re BS will take the view, as is hinted at by some of the Judges in Re B, that the difference between “wrong” and “plainly wrong” is a small crevice rather than a grand canyon.

So both Judges considering an application to appeal AND the lawyer advising their client as to whether there is a real prospect of success in appealing are, for the moment, slightly in the dark, but will need to consider that it is PROBABLY at least slightly easier to pass the test for permission than it previously had been.

Comments Off on “You’ve lost your lipgloss honey”

Posted in case law and tagged appeal, gloss, meeting the test for an appeal, permission to appeal, Re H v G, real prospect of success, what does real prospect of success mean. Bookmark the permalink.

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