Scissorhands versus Scissorhands

Posted on April 12, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

An imaginary judgment   [it has been a while, and I always like doing these].  This is like a Kramer versus Kramer for whimsical emo kids…

The Court is dealing today with an application by a father, Mr Edward Scissorhands, for contact with his son, Vincent. Vincent is just 3 months old, and lives with his mother, Kim Scissorhands. The parents have been estranged since the latter stages of the mother’s pregnancy with Vincent, and live apart.

 The unusual feature of this case is a stark one. Mr Scissorhands suffers from a unique physical disability, in that he does not possess hands with opposable thumbs and fingers, but rather a series of blades, five on each hand, the longest of which is approximately eighteen inches long.  Mr Scissorhands has learned, throughout his life, to use these ‘blade fingers’ with precision and accuracy, and the Court has been shown photographs of ice sculptures made by the father, which show both a high degree of artistic skill and control over these fingers.

 It is common ground in this case that Mr Scissorhands is a warm and kind man, who loves and adores his child and that he would be a positive influence and a good role model – his forebearance, inner strength, his kind heart and the way he has overcome what for many people would appear insurmountable obstacles, all do him enormous credit and would be a fine example for his son.

 Nor is there any ill-will or animosity between the parents, save for their disagreement as to whether contact can safely take place.

 The issue is whether, despite Mr Scissorhands knowledge of childcare and desire to put that knowledge into practice, he would be physically capable of doing so safely.

 It is factually correct, and Mr Scissorhands accepts this, that he could not hold his son, nor safely touch him, and that as a result, things that many parents take for granted, such as cuddling, tickling, hugging, changing a nappy, holding the child’s hand when crossing a road, are not possible for him.

 He was asked, by counsel representing the mother, for example, to demonstrate whilst in the witness box, how he would play a game of “peekaboo” and this resulted in several minor, but nonetheless real, cuts to his forehead, which would of course be not desirable for either the father or the child in what is ordinarily a happy and joyful interaction.

 The father’s face, I should add, does bear healing scars in a multitude of places, caused by inadvertent brushes of the scissor blades on his own face. 

One cannot easily ignore, despite understanding that the father would exercise all possible caution and care and would have no intention to cause any harm to Vincent, that if such accidental cuts have happened to the father, causing facial scarring, that it is a risk that cannot sensibly be ignored that a cut might happen, completely accidentally, to Vincent.

 I am invited by the mother to find that the father, not as a result of any culpability on his part but as a result of his unique personal characteristics, would pose a risk to Vincent in unsupervised contact, both in terms of an inability meet his needs  (he would be unable to hold or comfort Vincent if he were distressed and would be unable to change him, feeding him would potentially be manageable though difficult) and the risk of an accidental injury occurring.

 I have to confess that I found this aspect difficult. To make a finding of risk against a father where there is no culpability on his part, appeared at first blush to be harsh, and I had to take care in approaching this.

 However, I have to turn my mind to the test that the House of Lords set for assessing the risk of harm  (although this applies to public law proceedings, it is still pertinent in this private law case, considering as it does how the Court is to tackle the issue of future risk)

 Lord Nicholls in Re H [1996] AC 563 at 585F set out a likelihood of harm as: “a real possibility, a possibility that cannot sensibly be ignored having regard to the nature and gravity of the feared harm in the particular case.”

 It is not necessary, in determining whether there is a risk of harm to the child (as I must, this being not only a live issue for the Court to determine, but one of the relevant factors in the Welfare Checklist which I must have regard to), that is the basis on which I should approach it  – on the balance of probabilities, with the burden of proof being on the person who asserts risk (in this case mother) is there evidence of a risk that cannot sensibly be ignored.

 I have to answer that question in the affirmative. There is a risk that unsupervised contact would cause harm to Vincent, notwithstanding that father has no wish or desire to cause such harm and that he has nothing but love and warmth for Vincent.  When considering the harm element of the welfare checklist, I am not obliged to consider any mens rea or intent on the part of the parent.

 My conclusion is that Vincent would be at risk of harm in unsupervised contact and that the risk of harm could not be safely managed, despite any assurances that father could give. The harm would be in effect, outside of his ability to control, no matter how careful he would be, a momentary slip would cut this fragile baby.  A baby of 3 months needs to be changed, and comforted, needs to be cleaned, needs to be fed and held. The father, despite his clear desire to do so, is simply not in a position to do that safely.

 I am therefore driven to conclude that unsupervised contact for this father is not possible.

 I turn then to supervised contact. The mother is not willing to supervise the contact (and of course, directing an estranged parent to supervise the contact of their ex partner would be wholly unusual and indeed undesirable).  Nor are any members of her family willing to do so.

 The father has no family members who could undertake this task.

 Neither parent is in a financial position to fund the supervision of contact themselves.

 I have obviously then had to grapple with the fundamental principle that contact with both parents is vital for a child and that contact should not be ceased unless there are compelling reasons for this, only in exceptional circumstances, where there was no alternative. There is a raft of case law to that effect, the most recent being

 IN THE MATTER OF C (A CHILD) sub nom AL v (1) JH (2) C (A CHILD BY HER GUARDIAN) (2011) [2011] 2 FLR 912

 And therefore, a deal of thought has been given to whether some legal underpinning which ensures that there will be a supervisor for father’s contact, to allow him to have supervised contact until such time as Vincent is old enough to (a) not require such ‘hands on’ care and (b) to be in a position to recognise the need to be careful around his father and have the ability to keep himself safe.

 Having established that no family members can supervise the contact, that leaves only professionals.  A supported contact centre would not offer the degree of supervision that is required here – it must be more than merely ‘pop in’ or observed contact, there is a risk management function here.

 Whilst the Court could potentially make a direction for the Local Authority to prepare a report under section 7 of the Children Act 1989, and recommend to them that they prepare some observations of supervised contact, that would be only a short term solution, at best securing two or three supervised sessions of contact.

 Can they be obliged to supervise the father’s contact on an ongoing basis, as that is what is needed here?

 The answer, sadly, is that they are not.

 I cannot compel them under section 11 (7) (d) of the Children Act 1989, since I am not able to place conditions on contact that apply to third parties (as a result of s 11 (7) (b)

 I have been pointed to Family Assistance Orders pursuant to section 16 of the Children Act 1989, where the Court can order a Local Authority to ‘advise assist and befriend’ a family. Does that go so far as to require the supervision of contact?

 The case of S V P (CONTACT APPLICATION: FAMILY ASSISTANCE ORDER (1997)  1997] 2 FLR 277 suggests that a Court going over and above the requirement to advise, assist and befriend component of a Family Assistance Order goes too far.  Whilst I could invite the Local Authority to supervise contact under such an order, I cannot compel them to do so. I can direct s16 (4A ) for the LA to give advice and assistance regarding establishing, improving and maintaining contact, and direct for them to prepare a report s16 (6)

 Additionally, the FAO only lasts for 12 months, and what is required here is something much longer lasting.

 There is a temptation to consider making the FAO, directing that the father have supervised contact, and that the LA report in 12 months; and that is something I will store on the back burner for the moment. 

 I have also considered whether I could reasonably make an Interim Care Order (under which the Local Authority would have a duty to promote the father’s contact, and thus would have to provide supervision of it), but I cannot make such an order of the Court’s own motion, save for alongside a section 37 investigation. I could make more than one such order, if the section 37 report was in my judgment insufficient.  

 RE K (Children) 2012   [2013 1 FCR 87]  being authority for that point.

 But in my view, the most that could be achieved by doing so, would be to obtain a series of supervised contact sessions, and information about whether father could have meaningful contact in such a setting. It does nothing to secure the provision of ongoing supervision of contact; which would only happen if either the Local Authority wished to do so voluntarily, OR they voluntarily applied for a Care Order and one was made in due course.

 I have made enquiries of the Local Authority, and not surprisingly, they take the view that Vincent is being well cared for by his mother and that a Care Order is not required to protect him. They do not volunteer to either supervise his contact, other than as a ‘one off’ nor to issue proceedings.

 To make an Interim Care Order purely to facilitate contact appears to me, in the hackneyed phrase to be a sledgehammer to crack a nut. 

  [Author’s note, I think I can recall a case several years ago where this was done and supported by the higher Courts but I can’t now find it – if anyone recalls it, please nudge me. It might be Re M (Intractable Contact Dispute :Interim Care Order 2003, [2003] 2 FLR 636 where the Court sanctioned a removal under an ICO and a section 37 to try to resolve an intractable contact dispute. I think it probably is. ]

 I thus, it appears to me, cannot order the Local Authority to provide the supervision of contact, and the best statutory provision is to make an order for weekly supervised contact, make the Family Assistance Order for 12 months and direct the LA to report on their work in 12 months time, adjourning any final decisions until that point.

 It must be open to question whether the Court could utilise the same rationale as in Re K (Children) 2012, to make repeated Family Assistance Orders where the report does not cover what is desired  (i.e reports on the quality of that supervised contact and some ongoing commitment to supervise in the future)     – the Court of Appeal in Re K took the view that as there was nothing in statute to PREVENT repeated s37s, it was lawful to do so, and that therefore could be argued in this case, were I to do so.   Thus, a succession of Family Assistance Orders could potentially be made, leading to many years of litigation, albeit litigation only revisited annually.

  Instead, however, I make an order that the mother should make Vincent available for contact with his father once per week for two hours.

 I am entitled, under section 11 to make directions as to how that section 8 contact order will come into effect, and those of course include the handover venue.

 Very well, I have determined, taking into account all the circumstances of the case, and the welfare checklist, with Vincent’s welfare being my paramount consideration, that the handover venue should be the reception area of the Local Social Services offices. The father is not to have unsupervised contact, and is not to leave that reception area with Vincent without the express approval of the Local Authority. Those are matters that I direct, pursuant to section 11 of the Children Act 1989

 I will ensure that a transcript of this judgment, which indicates that Vincent would be at a risk of serious harm if the father’s contact were not supervised, and that any professional who knowingly allowed Vincent to come to that risk would, in my judgment be negligent. 

 I trust to the goodwill and sensible nature of the Local Authority staff that they would not allow Vincent to be subjected to a risk of significant harm that a Judge has carefully determined cannot sensibly be ignored.  I am sure that they will step in and make sure that Vincent is watched and observed and kept safe during the two hour period when he will be in their reception area (or such other venue as they choose to transport him and the father to)

 The parents, may of course, vary the handover location by agreement.

 I am certain that any reasonable Local Authority, mindful of their duties towards a child in need (and I find that Vincent is such a child) in their immediate proximity would conduct their section 17 assessment of his needs REASONABLY and conclude that he needs to have the relationship with his father that the Court have determined is vital for him, and that in order for him to be safe, there is a need for services, in the form of supervision.

 If I am wrong in my certainty, then another Court will look at this case, either by way of judicial review, or a civil claim for negligence.

 Thank you all for your time. 

 

 edward scissorhands

 

 

[As ever with my imaginary judgments, all I did was have the kernel of an idea – what would happen in Court if Edward Scissorhands have a baby? And then run with that, with no idea of how my imaginary Judge would get herself out of this predicament that I had cheerfully dug for her.  I didn’t get on to the disability discrimination aspects, though it does seem to me that it is solely the result of father being physically disabled and not having hands, that has resulted in him not having unsupervised contact. 

 

The joy of this draconian decision (which occurred to my imaginary Judge, who I think is called  Judge Knott-Lestyebe  is that not being a party to the proceedings, though the LA would want to appeal it, they may struggle to do so.

 

Although even this footnote now gets its own footnote  – a person who can show that they are a person interested, aggrieved or prejudicially affected by the judgment may appeal with leave  Re M (Prohibited Steps : Application for Leave} 1993 1 FLR 275.  

Of course, this is all mere fiction and fancy and any lawyer will recognise the most ridiculously far-fetched element of the whole piece – there is no way that post LASPO either party would have had counsel ]

 

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“Not with a bang, but a whimper”

Posted on April 11, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

Possible fallout from R (JG) v the Legal Services Commission 2013

This is the much anticipated, and long-awaited, outcome of the judicial review against the LSC (now the Legal Aid Agency, LAA) and their refusal to pay the child’s solicitors the costs of an expert fee in private law proceedings where the Court had determined (a) that they needed expert evidence to determine the case (b) that the parents who were not in receipt of public funding could not pay for it, or even pay a third share of it, and thus (c ) that the entire costs of the expert assessment should fall upon the child’s public funding certificate.

 That seemed to be the only way for the Court to obtain expert evidence when faced with parents representing themselves or who had no funds to pay for an expert; but many observers were becoming increasingly concerned that the Courts were appointing Guardians in private law cases not so much for what the Guardian could bring to the table, but so that the Court had access to the child’s public funding.

 The LSC were always going to take a stand on this at some point, and refuse to pay all of the costs of an expert report when the parents were not contributing.

 Here are some of the reasons, from a quick think, about why expert evidence might be needed in private law proceedings in order to reach a fair conclusion :-

  1. The child presents as having psychiatric or psychological problems – maybe the child is self-harming, or has anorexia
  2. The child has a medical condition, for example Asperger’s Syndrome, which may impact on change, or routines (and thus how contact and residence are to be managed), or the parent has a medical condition which affects their ability to care, or travel to contact
  3. There are allegations of Parental Alienation Syndrome, or implacable hostility
  4. There are historical concerns that require a risk assessment of future risk
  5. There are allegations about substance misuse  or alcohol misuse (testing, psychiatric evidence about prognosis)
  6. There is a dispute about paternity that requires DNA evidence   (unless the Court is going to start resolving paternity disputes without DNA testing)
  7. There are concerns about the mental health of either parent which requires expert evidence as to diagnosis and prognosis

In our brave new world where neither parent is entitled to public funding, none of those assessments can be done unless someone is prepared to pay for them.  And the LSC have made it plain that this someone is not going to be them, where they have been parachuted into the case as a portable chequebook (sorry, Rule 16.4 Guardian)

Sadly, the judgment in JG v LSC is not yet up, and I’m sure that the Court made attempts to put a ring fence around the most serious sorts of cases and put some exceptional circumstances in place (so I will return to the topic once the judgment is up)

 But in broad terms, the child’s solicitor, and the Law Society lost, and the LSC won. Not a huge surprise. We all saw that coming.   It doesn’t seem  to me that the Courts fought the LSC on the beaches on either this one, or the prior authority case, the judgments in both may as well have been written on a white flag.

 It seems, to this jaded hack, that Abu Qatada was able to get our Courts to do more for him, than the Law Society were able to get a Court to do for children. *  I will cheerfully retract this, if when I see the judgment, it appears that a valiant but ultimately doomed  attempt was made by the Court to  preserve the interests of children as being paramount in the whole exercise. 

*{too harsh? Probably, but I am a bit crosspatch about this. For example, in the recent planning case of  Stevens v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government 2013, the Court reminded themselves that where a persons human rights are impacted disproportionately by a decision, the Court can look at things more widely than as a pure judicial review.  Was that done in this case?

Furthermore,…….the House of Lords have held that, where the proportionality of the impact of a decision on human rights is at issue, that is a substantive question to be objectively determined by the court, and not a procedural one that requires the court to investigate the decision-making process (R (SB) v Governors of Denbigh High School [2006] UKHL 15: (“SB“) and Miss Behavin’ Ltd v Belfast City Council [2007] UKHL 19; (“Miss Behavin’“))

Thus, in SB, Lord Bingham said (at [29]):”The focus at Strasbourg is not and has never been on whether a challenged decision or action is the product of a defective decision-making process, but on whether, in the case under consideration, the applicant’s Convention rights have been violated”;

and, consequently, what matters in any case is “the practical outcome, not the quality of the decision-making process” (at [31]).  

And I ask, what the practical outcome on children and families of having Courts wish to obtain expert evidence to achieve a fair result in a case but being prevented from doing so, would be?}

 The LSC relied heavily, as they would,  on section 22 (4) of the Access to Justice Act, which provides that costs should not fall on a publicly funded party that would not otherwise have fallen on the party if they were not publicly funded.  [Of course, that Act was written at a time when the sheer volume of unrepresented litigants could not be foreseen, as it was pre LASPO, and I have yet to see whether the judgment wrestled with whether s22 (4) in these circumstances led to an incompatibility with section 1 of the Children Act 1989]

 And the LSC thus argued, and were successful, that the Court would not have made an order that the father or mother pay the entire cost of the expert fee, and that the most the LSC should pay is an equal share, one third.

 Where that leaves children, when the question for the Court in all those private law cases where the parents are not both in receipt of public funding (i.e nearly all of them) and the Court consider that an experts report is necessary to determine the case, is somewhere towards the source of the Swannee.

 *( I think it would need to be both parents getting funding, since the same principles would apply to  ‘parent gets public funding as a result of say domestic violence, would still be the LSC saying that they would only pay the share matched by the other parent)

 Can a Court, in fact, order that a parent pay for the costs of a report? They are an adult, and I think the Court are in difficulties ordering an adult to incur costs, or to do anything  (short of injunctions).  The Court can merely say, if you want to run your case, then there will be consequences for your case if you don’t comply with the directions that have been made. Ordering an adult to do something, or pay for something seems to me to need some statutory basis for the Court having that jurisdiction.

 So the Court can of course say “If you want to obtain this report and rely on it, then you will have to pay half of the costs. No costs, no report.” 

 But that doesn’t help, because of course, when you have two parties to litigation, one of them has a vested interest in not obtaining such a report. They are happy not to have it done.

 And will any expert take on an instruction where the parents are paying privately?  If it were me, I would want cash up front, because how would I get the payment from a mother if my report says something she doesn’t want to hear? Even if the parent is happy with the report, once they have it in their hands, what is the incentive to pay for it? So, cash up front is the only way.

And we are back, again, to the concept that money can buy you a better service in the family Courts   (a parent on income support who wants a report on how their child’s Asperger’s Syndrome might impact on a shared residence arrangement is not going to get one, whereas a parent who is a quantity surveyor say can get the report)

 It doesn’t feel too great to me, that in private law cases (and contrary to what the Family Procedure Rules say) the key question for a Court considering the need for an expert report is not

“Is this report necessary to assist the Court to resolve the proceedings”   but

 “Who will pay for this report?”

[Also, eek, will the LSC now try to clawback all of the expert fees that they have paid out to solicitors representing rule 16.4 guardians in the past?]

[Addendum – very grateful to 11kbw who have the judgment up on their website http://www.11kbw.com/judgments/docs/PNTCJudgment.pdf

 readers can form their own impression as to whether the right of parties to a fair trial, and the issues of whether a broad principle that if parties can pay for a report it shouldn’t all fall on the LSC has been blurred with LASPO whereby a party can now be not in receipt of public funding although they have no means to pay for representation or disbursements.  For my part, I thought an awful lot of the judgment was on the “well, we won’t be having those experts anymore, and this just helps with that” side of the fence.

For example  para 67:-  

“If  the children’s guardian is of the view that the issues identified are beyond his or her skill and expertise, the Court may be minded to ask CAFCASS whether the case can be co-worked by an extended scope practitioner who if necessary can be appointed as a joint guardian”

The exceptions aren’t set out in detail , but are touched on in principle at  para 87, the LSC having argued that the Court would have no jurisdiction even in extraordinary circumstances (the report being absolutely necessary, and the Court having carefully explored whether the other parties could pay a share or a reduced share) and the Court knocked the LSC back on this, though no other point; and said that there WOULD be circumstances in which if the report was necessary and there was simply no other way, the LSC might be ordered to pay for it. 

[Although they don’t need to follow a court order, don’t need to appeal it, and there’s no legitimate expectation for a child’s solicitor that a court order ordering the LSC to pay for it will ever result in a cheque being written, so hooray!]

The overwhelming message I take away is – don’t worry too much about how you are going to fund experts, because there won’t be any.  Bearing in mind that this judgment was prepared by the Judge seized with responsibility for modernisation of family justice, that’s an important message.  But read it and decide for yourselves, it is very possible that I am being deeply unfair. ]

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“It’s not rocket science”

Posted on April 10, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

A not-law piece, about… rocket science.

 

That phrase, “It’s not rocket science” is one that people, including myself use all the time. I am broadly aware of the general principles of rocket science – you have a fuel, an ignition source and the fuel burns producing a downward thrust force, which drives the rocket forward.

What I didn’t know, until I happened across a marvellous book about the development of the fuel and ignition source, was just how much was involved in it, and how dangerous the whole history of rocket science really was.

This book is called “Ignition!” by  John D Clark, a bona fide rocket scientist, and a man who was involved in the process of identifying, inventing, and testing, chemicals to be used in rocket science, both in terms of missiles to be shot at people   (he didn’t deal with the payload stuff, just the ‘how to get the missile to fly about’ bit) and the space race rockets.

It is an incredible book, packed with not only hard science (if you want to know the ins and outs, you will find it there), but the human stories of how things came about, the competing interests of various groups, some idiotic bureaucracy, and lots and lots and lots of explosions.  And I just love the writers style, and as a science geek, I found it funny as hell.

This passage, for example

 

The old destroyer gun turret which housed our card-gap setup had become a bit frayed and tattered from the shrapnel it had contained (The plating on a destroyer is usually thick enough to keep out the water and the smaller fish ) So we had installed an inner layer of armor plate, standing off about an inch and a half from the original plating

 And, as the setup hadn’t been used for several months, a large colony of bats —yes, bats, little Dracula types —had moved into the gap to spend the winter

 And when the first shot went off, they all came boiling out with their sonar gear fouled up, shaking their heads and pounding their ears They chose one rocket mechanic —as it happens, a remarkably goosy character anyway—and decided that it was ail his fault. And if you, gentle reader, have never seen a nervous rocket mechanic, complete with monkey suit, being buzzed by nine thousand demented bats and trying to beat them off with a shovel, there is something missing from your experience.

 

The book is pretty expensive if you try to buy it  (I can see why, if I owned a copy, I would not part with it) . But it is available for free here (and as it is out of print, you aren’t depriving the author of any income)

http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf

 

There were some major problems that they had to solve. They had to produce a fuel that would burn well, and efficiently (and that was easy to produce and cheap), and an oxidising agent that would make that fuel burn (again, that would do the job well and efficiently, and that was easy to produce and cheap)

They then needed also to have both of those chemicals be reasonably stable. If you are burning the hell out of tonnes of fuel to make a rocket go, you want that burning process to be safe and controlled and not to just blow up on the launchpad.

You also want the oxidising agent and the fuel to be safe – safe to store, safe to have sat in a rocket , safe to move about, safe to pour.

You also need the liquids not to boil too quickly and turn into gas. That would be bad. You also need them not to freeze too easily and turn into non-burning solids.

 

[This is a pretty big deal, both for space, and for firing rockets at the sort of places the Americans and British were thinking of firing rockets at during the forties and fifties, which were pretty cold places…]

And you want these chemicals not to react with the rocket itself, not to dissolve it, or undergo any sort of chemical reaction, or turn to tar or sludge or what have you.

A fundamental problem with all that being – in order to have a really efficient fuel and a really efficient oxidising agent  (because every pound of fuel has to be lifted, you want them to be doing a good job of producing thrust) tend to be lively, reactive and insanely dangerous chemicals in their own right, and what you are doing in rocket science is putting both in close proximity. So the stuff that works is dangerous, the stuff that is safe doesn’t work, and making the dangerous stuff still work but not kill everyone around it means inventing new stuff, so not cheap.

The book really recounts all of the work that went into solving these multiple problems; most of which were resolved by finding, or even inventing, the most dangerous sorts of chemicals you could imagine (generally putting as much nitrogen, hydrogen or fluorine as possible into them), making them blow up a lot and then trying to find something you could add to them that would make them safer without ruining their efficiency too much.

There really are LOTS of explosions.

If you remember any of your chemistry from school, the fact that the early rocket scientists hit upon nitric acid as their liquid oxidising agent might make you a bit nervous. The fact that the brands of choice of nitric acid were known as “Red Fuming Nitric Acid” and “White Fuming Nitric Acid” even more so.

“The only possible source of trouble connected with the acid is its corrosive nature, which can be overcome by the use of corrosion resistant materials.”

 Ha! If they had known the trouble that nitric acid was to cause before it was finally domesticated, the authors would probably have stepped out of the lab and shot themselves.

 

 

This is Clark’s description of one early trial, WFNA is the White Fuming Nitric Acid I spoke of a second ago

Came the day of the first trial. The propellants were hydrazine and WFNA. We were all gathered around waiting for the balloon to go up, when Uncle Milty warned, “Hold it —the acid valve is leaking!”

 “Go ahead —fire anyway!” Paul ordered.

 I looked around and signaled to my own gang, and we started backing gently away, like so many cats with wet feet.

 Howard Streim opened his mouth to protest, but as he said later, “I saw that dogeating grin on Doc’s face and shut it again,” and somebody pushed the button.

 There was a little flicker of yellow flame, and then a brilliant blue-white flash and an ear-splitting crack. The lid to the chamber went through the ceiling (we found it in the attic some weeks later),the viewports vanished, and some forty pounds of high-grade optical glass was reduced to a fine powder before I could blink.

 

And Red Fuming Nitric Acid?

 

The RFNA of 1945 was hated by everybody who had anything to do with it, with a pure and abiding hatred. And with reason. In the first place, it was fantastically corrosive. If you kept it in an aluminum drum, apparently nothing in particular happened —as long as the weather was warm. But when it cooled down, a slimy, gelatinous, white precipitate would appear and settle slowly to the bottom of the drum.

 This sludge was just sticky enough to plug up the injector of the motor when you tried to fire it. People surmised that it was some sort of a solvated aluminum nitrate, but the aversion with which it was regarded was equaled only by the difficulty of analyzing it.

 If you tried to keep the acid in stainless steel (SS-347 stood up the best) the results were even worse. Corrosion was faster than with aluminum, and the acid turned a ghastly green color and its performance was seriously degraded. This became understandable when the magnitude of the change in composition was discovered. Near the end of 1947, JPL published the results of two acid analyses.

 One was of a sample of RFNA fresh from the manufacturer, which had scarcely started to chew on the drum in which it was shipped. The other was a sample of “old” acid, which had been standing for several months in a SS-347 drum. The results were eloquent And, if my own experience is any criterion, there was a bit of insoluble matter of cryptic composition on the bottom of the drum. Acid like that might have been useful in the manufacture of fertilizer, but as a propellant it was not.*

 So the acid couldn’t be kept indefinitely in a missile tank — or there wouldn’t be any tank left. It had to be loaded just before firing, which meant handling it in the field.

 This is emphatically not fun. RFNA attacks skin and flesh with the avidity of a school of piranhas. (One drop of it on my arm gave me a scar which I still bear more than fifteen years later.) And when it is poured, it gives off dense clouds of NO2, which is a remarkably toxic gas. A man gets a good breath of it, and coughs a few minutes, and then insists that he’s all right. And the next day, walking about, he’s just as likely as not to drop dead.

 So the propellant handlers had to wear protective suits (which are infernally hot and so awkward that they probably cause more accidents than they prevent) and face shields, and frequently gas masks or self-contained breathing apparatus

 

Things didn’t go much more smoothly when they tried using peroxide as the oxidising agent instead of nitric acid

 

But here an unexpected complication showed up. The peroxide was to be stored aboard airplane carriers in aluminum tanks. And then suddenly it was discovered that trace quantities of chlorides in peroxide made the latter peculiarly corrosive to aluminum. How to keep traces of chloride out of anything when you’re sitting on an ocean of salt water was a problem whose solution was not entirely obvious.

 

And there was always the problem of gross pollution. Say that somebody dropped (accidentally or otherwise) a greasy wrench into 10,000 gallons of 90 percent peroxide in the hold of the ship. What would happen —and would the ship survive? This question so worried people that one functionary in the Rocket Branch (safely in Washington) who had apparently been reading Captain Horatio Hornblower, wanted us at NARTS to build ourselves a 10,000-gallon tank, fill it up with 90 percent peroxide, and then drop into it —so help me God —one rat. (He didn’t specify the sex of the rat.) It was with considerable difficulty that our chief managed to get him to scale his order down to one test tube of peroxide and one quarter inch of rat tail

 

 

And chlorine trifluoride  (which even my 25 years ago recollection of chemistry just makes me go “NO! what are you thinking? Don’t open that bottle”  ) didn’t go a whole lot better     [hypergolic by the way, means spontaneously igniting – a very very good quality in rocket fuel, bad for people testing it who like to have a full complement of fingers]

 

 

Chlorine trifluoride, ClF3, or “CTF” as the engineers insist on calling it, is a colorless gas, a greenish liquid, or a white solid. It boils at 12° (so that a trivial pressure will keep it liquid at room temperature) and freezes at a convenient —76°. It also has a nice fat density, about 1.81 at room temperature.

 It is also quite probably the most vigorous fluorinating agent in existence— much more vigorous than fluorine itself. Gaseous fluorine, of course, is much more dilute than the liquid ClF3, and liquid fluorine is so cold that its activity is very much reduced.

 All this sounds fairly academic and innocuous, but when it is translated into the problem of handling the stuff, the results are horrendous. It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem.

 

It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water —with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals — steel, copper, aluminum, etc. —because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminum keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere.

If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.

 

And even if you don’t have a fire, the results can be devastating enough when chlorine trifluoride gets loose, as the General Chemical Co. discovered when they had a big spill. Their salesmen were awfully coy about discussing the matter, and it wasn’t until I threatened to buy my RFNA from Du Pont that one of them would come across with the details.

 

It happened at their Shreveport, Louisiana, installation, while they were preparing to ship out, for the first time, a one-ton steel cylinder of CTF. The cylinder had been cooled with dry ice to make it easier to load the material into it, and the cold had apparently embrittled the steel. For as they were maneuvering the cylinder onto a dolly,

it split and dumped one ton of chlorine trifluoride onto the floor. It chewed its way through twelve inches of concrete and dug a threefoot hole in the gravel underneath, filled the place with fumes which corroded everything in sight, and, in general, made one hell of a mess.

 

If you want to know more about chlorine trifluoride, I can recommend the wonderful In the Pipeline blog, where Derek Lowe talks about it in his wonderful column “Things I won’t work with”

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time.php

 

Let’s put it this way [Derek says]: during World War II, the Germans were very interested in using it in self-igniting flamethrowers, but found it too nasty to work with.

 

And points out that it is so reactive, it cheerfully sets fire to wet sand. To wet sand. The stuff that you keep in labs to throw on chemicals that are reacting too violently, to get the reaction to stop. Not much sets wet sand on fire.

 

If you are even more curious, you can see some footage of some insanely brave French scientists testing out how reactive chlorine trifluoride is here

 

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/04/05/chlorine_trifluoride_some_empirical_findings.php

 

A seriously seriously scary chemical.

 

And back in the Fifties, the author of Ignition was not only using that chemical, but working out how it could be mixed with liquid hydrogen and how quickly it would burn…

 

There’s a lovely passage where he is advising a fellow scientist not to go near a chemical called Ethyl Perchlorate   (frankly, if Clark of all people is telling you that a chemical is too dangerous to use, you really really really should listen to him, but they didn’t)

 

I read in a Wyandotte report that they intended to do this, and phoned Bill to read to him what Sidgwick, in “Chemical Elements and their Compounds,” had to say on the subject of the ethyl compound.

 

“Hare and Boyle (1841) say [Sidgwick wrote] that it is incomparably more explosive than any other known substance, which still seems to be very nearly true. . . . Meyer and Spormann (1936) say that the explosions of the perchlorate esters are louder and more destructive than those of any other substance; it was necessary to work with minimum quantities under the protection of thick gloves, iron masks [Ha, there, M. Dumas!], and thick glasses, and to handle the vessels with long holders.”

 

But Cuddy (presumably investing in leather gloves and an iron mask first) went ahead anyway. He told me later that the esters were easy enough to synthesize, but that he and his crew had never been able to fire them in a motor, since they invariably detonated before they could be poured into the propellant tank. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that this line of investigation was not further extended.

 

The chemicals would detonate during the act of POURING it into the fuel tank. That is some lively stuff.

 

Anyway, “Ignition!” is a great book (and if any book earned the right to have an exclamation mark at the end of its title, it is this one) whether you are a hard scientist or you just like reading about really brave men making things blow up in dazzlingly different ways.

 

It has given me a new found respect for rocket science, as well. I had thought it was largely maths and engineering, but it was clearly proper lunacy going on too. Perhaps our job isn’t as tough as we imagine.

 

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Transformers…. Cutting robots in disguise

Posted on April 9, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

One might have thought that in the week that LASPO kicked in, with huge chunks of areas of legal representation being taken out of the legal aid system, the Government might let those lawyers who survived and are still reeling have a little bit of respite.

 You fools! Of course not. Following some sort of Sun Tzu Art of War philosophy, the Government have decided that the best time to kick people is when they are down.

 Hence

 “Transforming Legal Aid” – a new consultation     (and we all know how ‘consultation’ works)

 https://consult.justice.gov.uk/digital-communications/transforming-legal-aid

Here’s the waffle

 

6.6 Progress is currently being made to reduce the average duration of care cases through the implementation of the Family Justice Review reforms90 which should have the effect of reducing the unit cost of cases by tackling delay and streamlining cases, for example through reducing the use of experts.91 The national average duration of care cases has already reduced from around 54 weeks to around 45 weeks.92 The aim is to achieve an average of 26 weeks in all but exceptional cases, and this time limit will be enshrined in statute subject to parliamentary approval of the Children and Families Bill.93 Associated efficiencies in court proceedings are planned in support of this time limit. For example, the recent introduction of a new Part 25 of the Family Procedure Rules in January 2013 which requires the court to restrict expert evidence to those circumstances where it is necessary to assist court proceedings. This requirement will also be enshrined in statue through the Children and Families Bill94 which, subject to Parliamentary approval, is expected to receive Royal Assent next year. In reducing the commissioning of unnecessary expert reports, this requirement should also reduce the related work for solicitors. It is also expected that further efficiencies currently under development might also reduce the average number of hearings required in a case.

 

6.7 As the fee paid to solicitors for their work on a case is fixed, the cost of dealing with fewer experts or fewer hearings would not automatically adjust to reflect the likely reduction in the work required of solicitors (whereas any reduction in the number of hearings would lead automatically to a reduction in advocacy costs, as these are calculated on the basis of hearing fees). We consider that the legal aid fee paid for these proceedings should represent value for money and therefore reflect more closely the decreasing duration of cases in this area, the amount of work involved and the further efficiencies to be gained.

 

That’s all very long – what do they mean?

 Well, now that care proceedings will be only lasting twenty six weeks (which, I hasten to remind everyone is a PROPOSAL which has not even been discussed by Parliament), that will mean less work has to be done by the lawyers, so we should pay them less.

 How much less?

 Ten per cent.

 

[Never mind that we don’t actually know yet the structure that would allow care cases to be concluded within 26 weeks, or that as I pointed out yesterday, NINE YEARS of striving to get care proceedings concluded within 40 weeks has resulted in more local authorities having an average length of proceedings ABOVE 60 weeks than BELOW 40, so there is no way of knowing whether a lawyer would be doing more or less work, or whether the aspirations for 26 weeks are going to be any more effective than the last nine years of targets]

6.10 We propose to reduce the representation fee paid to solicitors in public family law cases by 10%. We consider that this is a reasonable reflection of the decreasing duration of cases in this area, the amount of work involved and the further efficiencies to be gained.

 6.11 This proposed reduction would apply to the current fixed fees under the Scheme. In addition, to promote efficient resolution of cases and avoid creating any incentive to delay, it would apply to the hourly rates that are payable where a case reaches the escape threshold.

 

And experts?

 Waffle time

 7.9 The current codified rates were introduced in October 2011. Prior to that time, there were no set rates for expert services, generally, and therefore little effective control over their cost. Instead, contracted legal aid solicitors, who remain responsible for engaging relevant experts as and when necessary, would bill the then LSC after the service had been provided and paid for, based on the fee requested by the individual expert in the particular case. The initial codification of expert rates therefore represented a necessary first step in providing clarity and control over spend on experts, while continuing to ensure access to necessary expert services as and when required.

 

 Upshot?  Fees to experts to be cut by 20 per cent

 I know that this blog is read by people who aren’t lawyers, and aren’t experts, and they may well be thinking – good, cut the costs of these fat cats. That’s certainly the Daily Mail take on it  (a good rule of thumb in life, I find, is where you find yourself agreeing with the Daily Mail take on anything, you probably need to take a hard look at either yourself or the facts)

 The reality is that if you cut the income of a group of professionals by 10% one year and 10% the next (lawyers) or 20% in one fell swoop (experts), then some of them will go under. That means less choice, less availability, more delay, less chance that the parents who need them will be able to get them.

 The ones that do keep going will be forced to do more work for less money, which means spending less time on each case.  If we want the best chance of proper justice for families, the lawyers instructed by parents need to have the ability to give the proper time that it takes to prepare a case, to form a proper meaningful relationship with the parent so that there is understanding on both sides and to give advice that is based on that solid understanding of both the facts and the people.

 And if you think this is the end of the cuts, you’d be mistaken. If the Government manage to push through removing huge swathes of free legal advice, and cut the income of those who are left by 20% in two years, they will be back again for another cut in 2014, 2015 until there is nothing left to cut. [Ideally perhaps to the point where solicitors doing family law will pay the Government for each case they take on]

 Consultation responses to this new document are due by June 2013 – the response details are on the link I started with.  I found myself seriously pondering Edmund Burke’s words when thinking about this.

Decepticon is such an ugly word, I prefer Consultatron

Our new Minister for Justice,  the Rt Honourable Mr Megatron, reporting for Efficiency Saving duty. Tremble before him

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“It is not down on any map, true places never are”

Posted on April 8, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

The DFE Adoption maps and what we can learn from them, if anything

The DFE have published their adoption maps, whilst repeating over and over that these are not a  judgment on local authority performance. Much in the same way that listing all of the countries job centres in tabular form, with those who have achieved the highest number of stopping people’s benefits is not a league table, or an indication that stopping people’s benefits is considered to be a good thing.

 Anyway, I love maps, and I thought there were some interesting things to emerge from them. Plus, the chance for this title, which is probably my favourite line in all literature (it is from Moby Dick, and the nearest competitor is probably Hotspur’s rejoinder to Glendower’s  “I can call spirits from the vasty deep”   – “Why so can I, or so can any man. But do they come when you do call for them?” )

 

Also, it lets me make reference to another of my favourite passages, from The Hunting of the Snark

 He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.

 

 carroll-map-thumbnail

 

I’m not sure that the DFE maps constitute a map we can all understand, though there are some who would claim it has as much meaningful content as the map in Hunting of the Snark.  Certainly, if we apply the Bellman from Snark’s rationale that “What I tell you three times is true”  then it is not intended to be a comparison of Local Authority performances    *

 

[And for an excellent analysis of the “What I tell you three times is true” motif,  see this wonderful piece from Inky Fool  –  which tells you the derivation of that annoying habit people have of politely refusing something twice and then accepting it at the third time of asking. It all arose with a polite convention about what you are supposed to do if someone asks you to become a bishop. I wish that I had written it, but as I liked it so much, the least I can do is steer others towards it. If you are ever asked to become a bishop, now you know the polite convention

 

http://blog.inkyfool.com/2010/04/nolo-episcopari-and-rule-of-bellman.html  ]

 

Enough literature, on with the maps!

http://www.education.gov.uk/childrenandyoungpeople/families/adoption/a00219985

 

The main DFE caveat with the maps is that they only include figures for adopters approved by Local Authorities and none by any voluntary adoption agencies.  The main gripe from the Local Authorities is that looking at a map just tells you something bald, and you can’t compare, say Leicestershire and Liverpool without knowing something about the size of population and social problems that each might have.

 

Anyway,  there are several maps, but the one I was most interested in was Map B

http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/m/map%20b%20number%20of%20children%20waiting%20for%20each%20adopter.pdf

Map B does a clever little exercise – for each Local Authority, it takes all of the children in that area who are waiting to be adopted  (i.e where an Adoption Panel / Agency Decision Maker has considered that adoption is the plan and where a Court has made a Placement Order) and compared that to the number of adopters that that Local Authority has approved.

 In an ideal world, you would want 1 adoptive family approved for every child that you are looking to place   (maybe even ideally slightly higher than that, to give you some choice, though of course, some adopters are looking to adopt 2 children).

 

What it tells you is, notionally speaking, if a Local Authority decided that they were going to match every single adoptive family with a child on their books,  whether they would have adopters left over, or children left over. And how many.

 For children waiting to be adopted, this map is bad news. The lowest category, the darkest blue, is where there are 2 or fewer children waiting for each approved adopter.

 The highest category, the yellow, is where there are between 11 and 23 children waiting for each approved adopter.

 Now, whilst some adopters are prepared to adopt two children (and thus the navy blue Local Authorities might be able to clear their children waiting for adoption if they could theoretically match up all the children with all the adopters), there aren’t adopters waiting to adopt eleven or twenty three children.

 

Meaning that if one did that notional exercise, matching every adopter up with as many children as they were prepared to take, the yellow authorities would have barely put a dent in the children needing to be placed (maybe reducing the number of children waiting by 20%, maybe 10%, maybe even less)

 Green authorities have between 6 and 10 children waiting for each approved adopter.

 So, the more yellow and green authorities there are, the worse it is for children waiting to be adopted.

 How many dark blues are there?  I made it about fifty.

 And yellows? I made it about 13, with 19 greens.

 Bear in mind, that what often happens is that one local authority places children for adoption with adopters approved by another local authority. But you can see that even the best authorities don’t have adopters left over (compared to the number of children that need families) and that even spreading out the yellow and green authorities additional families across the country doesn’t solve the problem.

 Nationally, we have far more children needing to be adopted   (* Anticipating the comments, by which I mean children where a Court has heard evidence and argument and decided that adoption is the right plan for them) than there are people approved as adopters.

 Equally, you can see that whilst the Midlands is pretty evenly matched between children needing placements and placements available, the East of the country and the South/South East of the country is pretty bad, with there being no neighbouring counties to raid for adoptive placements, since they are all struggling to meet their own demands.

 It is a shame that the independent adoption agencies figures are not in there, it may well be that those figures would dramatically alter the position.

 It is a worry, however, that the demand for adoptive placements is substantially outstripping the supply of such placements. That leads to delay, of course, it leads to some children not being able to be found placements, and inevitably it needs to a situation where the chance to place difficult children (in large sibling groups, or with profound problems, or with a family background of mental health problems) becomes much harder.

 Perhaps the Government’s ambitious thinking that there are four million potential adopters out there and that more can be converted from potential to actual if the process is made less bureaucratic and terrifying is right, and that the problem can be addressed by better recruitment.

 [There’s a curious little spreadsheet tucked away with some hard data

 http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/xls/a/adoption%20scorecard%20underlying%20data.xls

 I liked looking at the average duration of care proceedings in each authority, given that we are told that 26 weeks will be coming in, and we have been ostensibly working on an average target of 40 weeks for  NINE YEARS now.  Yes, the Protocol, god rest its soul, would have been ten years old this November.

 I counted 11 of the 149 authorities that had an average duration of care proceedings of 40 weeks or under.

 Let’s look at 50 weeks – that being 25% longer than the current target.  I counted NINETY SIX authorities where the average duration of proceedings was 50 weeks or longer.  There were some, not many, but some, that were over 60 weeks  (i.e 50% longer than the current target)   – 18 in all.  

 So actually, there are MORE authorities going 50% OVER the current target than there are going UNDER the current target. After NINE YEARS of pressure to get the duration down to 40 weeks  ]

 

 [A completely irrelevant footnote – as a blogger, I have a spam filter, and I get the most extraordinary spam comments, most of which are thinly disguised links to fake sunglasses or handbags, some are extraordinary Williams Burroughs-esque stream of consciousness masquerading as genuine dialogue. Today, however, I got a spam link from someone purporting to be from a website named “Toddler-hitting.org”   which might really have missed its target audience completely. I did not follow it up, I don’t think its likely to be my cup of tea]

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“How’s that?”

Posted on April 5, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

When does judicial intervention cross the line into being improper and showing bias?

I recently read a very good piece on Lawtel  [other law reporting websites are available]  written by Stephen Gerlis, reporting on the Court of Appeal case ofHadi Jemaldeen v A-Z Law Solicitors 2012

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2012/1431.html 

 As the piece is behind a paywall, and about a civil case, the issues probably won’t have come to everyone, so I thought it was worthy of a discussion in the family law context – with a nod of the hat to Mr Gerlis for his originating piece.

 The importance of the case is that the appeal hinged on whether the Judge who had heard the case had overstepped the mark when exercising control of the questions and posing his own questions, such that the appellant considered him to have been biased.

This led the Court of Appeal to run through the authorities on judicial interventions, and as we are about to embark on a brave new world of litigants in person (whether they wish to be or not) this may be an issue that crops up from time to time. It is that consideration of where the line is drawn that is potentially of interest.

I liked this quotation from Lord Denning (hence the title)

 “The Judge is not a mere umpire to answer the question “How’s that?” His object, above all, is to find out the truth, and to do justice according to law”.

 

 That authority is from Jones v National Coal Board [1957] 2 QB 55.  and the temptation to be able to quote a case about the National Coal Board AND Lord Denning in any family case is almost overwhelming.  We don’t get much opportunity to crowbar Lord Denning into family law cases.

 

[The only thing I am more tempted to say in Court, which I duly resist every time is “Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain? ” ]

 The Court of Appeal set out that the test, when looking at how the Judge managed the trial/hearing is

 

  1. 20.   “The question is whether the fair-minded and informed observer, having considered the facts, would conclude that there was a real possibility that the tribunal was biased.”

Which principle is derived from the House of Lords in Magill v Porter [2001]UKHL 67, [2002] 2 AC 357.

 Going back to the Coal Board case (and why wouldn’t we?)

 

  1. In pursuit of that fundamental objective the judge is not required to sit silent as the sphinx. Appropriate intervention while a witness is giving evidence, even while the witness is being cross-examined, is not merely permissible but may be vital. As Denning LJ put it (page 63):

“No one can doubt that the judge, in intervening as he did, was actuated by the best motives. He was anxious to understand the details of this complicated case, and asked questions to get them clear in his mind. He was anxious that the witnesses should not be harassed unduly in cross-examination, and intervened to protect them when he thought necessary. He was anxious to investigate all the various criticisms that had been made against the board, and to see whether they were well founded or not. Hence, he took them up himself with the witnesses from time to time. He was anxious that the case should not be dragged on too long, and intimated clearly when he thought that a point had been sufficiently explored. All those are worthy motives on which judges daily intervene in the conduct of cases, and have done for centuries.”

He continued (page 64):

“The judge’s part in all this is to hearken to the evidence, only himself asking questions of witnesses when it is necessary to clear up any point that has been overlooked or left obscure; to see that the advocates behave themselves seemly and keep to the rules laid down by law; to exclude irrelevancies and discourage repetition; to make sure by wise intervention that he follows the points that the advocates are making and can assess their worth; and at the end to make up his mind where the truth lies. If he goes beyond this, he drops the mantle of a judge and assumes the robe of an advocate”.

  1. So there is nothing objectionable, for example, in a judge intervening from time to time to make sure that he has understood what the witness is saying, to clear up points that have been left obscure, to make sure that he has correctly understood the technical detail, to see that the advocates behave themselves, to protect a witness from misleading or harassing questions, or to move the trial along at an appropriate pace by excluding irrelevancies and discouraging repetition. Indeed, it is, as Denning LJ recognised (page 65) his duty to do so.

 

 

So the Judge can appropriately ask questions to clarify, or to check that she has understood, she can prevent inappropriate questions being asked, and she can tell everyone to get a move on once the point has been explored sufficiently.

 

What CAN’T the Judge do? She must not ‘descend into the arena’

 

  1. But there is, of course, a difficult and delicate balance to be held. The judge must not, as it is often put, descend into the arena. Denning LJ referred (page 63) to Lord Greene MR, who in Yuill v Yuill [1945] P 15, 20, had:

“explained that justice is best done by a judge who holds the balance between the contending parties without himself taking part in their disputations? If a judge, said Lord Greene, should himself conduct the examination of witnesses, “he, so to speak, descends into the arena and is liable to have his vision clouded by the dust of conflict”.

Denning LJ continued (page 64) that it is for the advocate to make his case;

“as fairly and strongly as he can, without undue interruption, lest the sequence of his argument be lost.”

 

 

Where the interventions can potentially overstep the mark is during cross-examination.   [Back to the Coal Board again  – underlining my own]

 

Now, it cannot, of course, be doubted that a judge is not only entitled but is, indeed, bound to intervene at any stage of a witness’s evidence if he feels that, by reason of the technical nature of the evidence or otherwise, it is only by putting questions of his own that he can properly follow and appreciate what the witness is saying. Nevertheless, it is obvious for more than one reason that such interventions should be as infrequent as possible when the witness is under cross-examination. It is only by cross-examination that a witness’s evidence can be properly tested, and it loses much of its effectiveness in counsel’s hands if the witness is given time to think out the answer to awkward questions; the very gist of cross-examination lies in the unbroken sequence of question and answer. Further than this, cross-examining counsel is at a grave disadvantage if he is prevented from following a preconceived line of inquiry which is, in his view, most likely to elicit admissions from the witness or qualifications of the evidence which he has given in chief. Excessive judicial interruption inevitably weakens the effectiveness of cross-examination in relation to both the aspects which we have mentioned, for at one and the same time it gives a witness valuable time for thought before answering a difficult question, and diverts cross-examining counsel from the course which he had intended to pursue, and to which it is by no means easy sometimes to return .”

 

And as, much like Marty McFly, we are no longer in the Fifties, the Court of Appeal added this

one of the changes in civil litigation since 1957, when Jones v National Coal Board was decided, is that more attention is now given to the criteria of proportionality, expedition and the allocation of an appropriate share of the court’s resources to any individual case: CPR Part 1.1. An advocate can no longer expect to have unlimited time in which to conduct his cross-examination

 

[And towards the end, the Court of Appeal refer to a recent family case Re J (A child) [2012] EWCA Civ 1231  in which the Judge’s interventions and curbing of cross-examination prevented the matters which went to the very heart of the case being put, and which did end up overturning the original decision]

 As this was a civil case, the decision eventually reached on the case before the Court of Appeal isn’t that important, but you can probably guess from this brief extract from the original trial transcript (Professor Rees being the appellant saying that the Judge had unfairly interrupted him) what the end result of the Appeal was 

“THE RECORDER: I am interrupting your cross-examination.

PROFESSOR REES: No, it is very welcome, your Honour.

THE RECORDER: You had better ask the questions you want to ask.

PROFESSOR REES: Okay. Thank you, your Honour. But it is helpful to have these interventions, if I may say so, because ultimately your Honour has to decide this case and …

THE RECORDER: Well, if you put a document in which nobody has opened on, the witness has never see before, it is fairer for him and for me to try and work out what this document is supposed to be telling us all.

PROFESSOR REES: Absolutely, yes …”

 

[Hint, if you are going to claim in an appeal that a Judge unfairly interrupted you, don’t at the time, tell the Judge that the interventions are helpful and very welcome]

 

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“If you ever go across the sea to Ireland”

Posted on April 3, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

 A discussion of two cases dealing with parents who fled to Ireland to avoid pending care proceedings. We are having a curious burst of the Higher Courts dealing with similar issues coincidentally in batches, and this is another example.

The longer judgment is in  Re LM (A Child) 2013, a High Court decision determined by Mr Justice Cobb

 http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2013/646.html

and the shorter is a Court of Appeal decision

 Re OC and OE (Children) 2012 

 http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2013/162.html

 

In the Court of Appeal case, the Local Authority had concerns about the children, though probably not sufficient to warrant removal, and the mother fled to Ireland with them. The LA sought Interim Care Orders and a return to the jurisdiction. The Court of Appeal agreed that the English Courts had jurisdiction and that making orders compelling the return of the children to the jurisdiction was correct, but reminded themselves, that the status quo prior to the move to another country ought to be restored, and that the Judge had erred in making Interim Care Orders and sanctioning removal of the children in the absence of (a) the parents being there to oppose and (b) the LA demonstrating that the grounds for removal were made out.

 

I felt for the LA lawyer,  “their advocate frankly conceded to the judge that he was not operating in legal territory familiar to him”   and of course, LA lawyers don’t tend to be specialists in international law. If we were, we would wear much more expensive shoes, and work shorter hours.

 The Re LM case is probably more interesting.  Justice Cobb sets out the background here

 

  1. In June 2012, AM (hereafter “the mother”), then in an advanced stage of pregnancy, travelled with her husband, MM (hereafter “the father”) to the Republic of Ireland. In the following month, she gave birth to a baby girl (“LM”). LM is the mother’s fourth child. The mother’s older three children have been the subject of public law proceedings in this country, and are subject to public law final orders, all in kinship placements away from the mother.
  1. At this hearing, in London, the mother told me that she and her husband made that journey to Ireland “purposely to avoid my child [i.e. the baby] being stolen” by the local authority who had taken proceedings in relation to her older three children. It is common ground that this local authority would indeed have issued care proceedings in relation to the baby, had the mother remained in their area.
  1. The mother went on to tell me that “unfortunately” their plan has “backfired.”

 

The plan backfired, because the authorities in Ireland issued their equivalent of care proceedings, and the child was placed in foster care. Having fled there only to avoid care proceedings, the parents had no real interest in staying or living in Ireland – the mother came back to England [although to a different LA than the one she had been living in, and which was 200 miles away] , the father for work purposes moved to Scotland. That obviously had a huge impact on their contact.

 

It was therefore the mother’s application for the proceedings relating to the child to be brought into the English jurisdiction.

 

The High Court went on to identify the main aims of the judgment, and one of them is particularly noteworthy (I know that the ‘flee to avoid proceedings’ is a common school of thought on the internet, and Ireland has been a popular choice – proximity, no language barrier, and their constitutional opposition to adoption being key factors in this. In this case, it seems that it was discussion on the internet that led mother to make that decision to flee to Ireland )

 

  1. This judgment serves two principal purposes:

i) It discusses the legal and practical complications arising in seeking to achieve a transfer of jurisdiction in these circumstances;

ii) It seeks to provide solutions in the instant case, to achieve the move of LM to this jurisdiction in the near future, and the transfer of care proceedings to this Court, initially to the Family Division of the High Court.

  1. This judgment further serves to highlight how futile, and potentially damaging to the infant child, was the course which the parents embarked upon in June 2012. I am advised that there are other parents who have considered leaving this jurisdiction (and indeed been advised by campaigning groups to do so, as the mother indicated she had been) to avoid public authority intervention in their lives, and to achieve some juridical advantage through process in the Irish Courts. Quite apart from the fact that the parents themselves in this case apparently soon came to realise that this was not a good solution for LM or themselves, this judgment will underline how effectively the Courts of England and Wales and the Courts in Ireland, and the public authorities in each State, are able to co-operate to achieve the transfer of a child, and the public law proceedings concerning that child under the Council Regulation (EC) 2201/2003 of 27th November 2003 (hereafter ‘BIIR’), where it is demonstrated to be in the interests of the child to do so. The approach of the English Courts and the Irish Courts appears to be similar; the Irish Constitution exhibits no intention to establish Ireland as a sanctuary for families from other jurisdictions: see the Irish Supreme Court’s decision in Nottinghamshire County Council v B [2011] IESC 48 (at paragraph 72, per O’Donnell J.).

 

[The Irish case is worth reading, and I had not encountered it before. It sets out the very interesting analysis of the Irish constitutional situation with regard to adoption, particularly adoption of children of MARRIED couples http://www.bailii.org/ie/cases/IESC/2011/S48.html    which would probably be an entire article on its own. There certainly has been a school of thought, which this judgment corrects, that the Irish Courts and authorities could not and would not sanction a return of a child to a jurisdiction where adoption was a possible consequence of that return. It is rather more complex than that, and at the very least, the Irish courts would need to be satisfied that the risk of adoption was a very real and proximate one, rather than a possibility ]

The procedure is another Article 15 of Brussels II one [you may remember my recent blog on the Slovak case where the Slovak authorities used it to take over proceedings that were very advanced in the English Courts]

 

https://suesspiciousminds.com/2013/03/22/ambassador-with-these-brussels-2-applications-you-are-really-spoiling-us/ 

For that reason, I won’t set out all of the principles again. (Phew)

 

  1. At this hearing, on the matters relevant to and consequent upon the Article 15 transfer request, the position of the parties is as follows:

i) The mother: The mother initially proposed, and continues to support, a transfer of the proceedings to this jurisdiction, stating that it is clearly in LM’s interests that such a transfer should be effected. Towards the conclusion of her submissions, she appeared to suggest that her agreement to the Article 15 transfer was in fact conditional upon the receiving authority being identified as Y County Council rather than X County Council. I note the mother’s position in this regard and discuss it further below. That her acceptance of transfer is said to be conditional on the identification of a specific local authority as applicant in this country is of no real consequence, given that effective transfer relies on ‘acceptance’ by one party only to the Irish proceedings; in the instant case, the HSE has indicated its unconditional acceptance.

ii) The father: By letter dated 6th March 2013 from the father’s Irish solicitors, I was advised that he “continues to support his wife’s Article 15 request and consents to the transfer of the public law proceedings in their entirety to the jurisdiction of England and Wales. Our client is content that his position be confirmed by Counsel on behalf of the HSE to the English court on 12th March 2013.” In fact the father attended, from Scotland, for the second day of this hearing and confirmed that he supported the transfer but (corresponding to the position of his wife) wished me to identify the proposed applicant authority as Y County Council;

iii) The HSE: The HSE unconditionally ‘accepts’ the transfer and supports the court taking effective steps to achieve transfer of the proceedings to this jurisdiction; it invites me to be satisfied that it is in the best interests of LM that the proceedings are so transferred; the HSE is neutral on the identification of the appropriate ‘receiving’ authority;

iv) The Guardian ad Litem in the Irish proceedings: The Guardian, by letter dated 11th March 2013, confirms that it is her opinion:

“that the application being made is in the interests of [LM] and should be proceeded with as a matter of urgency ….”

The Guardian expresses her concern that “a transition plan” should be devised to achieve the physical transfer of the infant LM to this jurisdiction ideally to “a long term placement …. should the decision outcome of care proceedings in England and Wales be that [LM] remain in long term State care”. She supports a transition plan “strictly on the basis that” LM is placed in the care of a specific local authority (she had proposed X County Council) and recommends that a Guardian ad Litem be appointed for LM.

And then

 

  1. The request for transfer under Article 15 was further predicated upon a conclusion that it is in LM’s “best interests” for the transfer to be made to this court. It is suggested on behalf of HSE that the best interests test is amply satisfied by a combination of the following factors, in summary:

i) LM is British; her parents, siblings and kinship carers are British.

ii) LM has no family in Ireland. Her only connection with Ireland is that she is physically present there because of a tactical international move made by the mother to avoid the jurisdiction of the English courts.

iii) The mother is now in this jurisdiction and has indicated a wish to remain here. Were LM to be returned to this jurisdiction, this would render easier the facilitation of contact between her and her mother. Assessments of family relationships will be more effective if mother and daughter can be seen regularly together;

and

iv) The background history of LM’s older half siblings originates entirely in the area of X County Council; this evidence is likely to be important in any determination of LM’s future care

 

 

[You will note that HSE, who are the Health Service Executive of Ireland, were agreeing to the transfer of jurisdiction, thus showing comprehensively that the theory that Irish authorities are constitutionally bound to stand guard over parents who might run the risk of their children being adopted and ensure they are not removed, doesn’t work in practice, much as the “freeman of the land” devices don’t actually work in practice]

The case then got into a consideration of which of the two local authorities in England (the one mum had fled from, or the one in which she was now living) would be responsible for the new proceedings.

 I won’t repeat any of that argument, as the authorities are all well known, but I did like Justice Cobb’s asides here

 

The hopes of Thorpe LJ in the Northamptonshire case that the statutory sub-sections could provide “a simple test” to be “operated by the court in what should be the unlikely event of dispute, to determine which Local Authority is to be responsible for the care plan and its implementation” (p.891A) have not entirely been fulfilled, as the subsequent case-law demonstrates. What he hoped would be a “rapid and not over sophisticated review of the history to make a purely factual determination” (p.890G ibid.) in any given case has equally proved forlorn.

 

 

On the facts of the case, the Court found that the designated authority was the one that mother had originally fled from and that she had not become ordinarily or habitually resident in the new one (she was effectively sofa-surfing)

 

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“You’re fired! Now, can I have an adjournment?”

Posted on April 3, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

We seem to have had a recent flurry of Court of Appeal decisions about whether it is fair to press on with a final hearing where a parent parts company with their lawyer shortly before the hearing, or even in the midst of it.

This is an interesting dilemma, since obviously there’s a tension between wanting a fair trial and recognising that a parent who suddenly finds that they are representing themselves at the eleventh hour has more than they can realistically cope with, and having decisions made in accordance with the timetable the Court has fixed for the case (that being based on what the child’s timescales are)

On the one hand, it is important that parents who face the prospect of permanent separation from their child (a) HAVE a lawyer and (b) HAVE CONFIDENCE in that lawyer; on the other, if simply sacking your lawyer gets the hearing adjourned, then it would always be better to simply sack your lawyer at the morning of the first day, rather than INSTRUCT your lawyer to argue for an adjournment.

 [Also, if not having a lawyer gets you an adjournment, you can infinitely prolong the decision by sacking your lawyer every time you reach the final hearing, so there has to be a line drawn in the sand somewhere]

 alan sugar

There are two recent cases, with two different outcomes

Re L (A Child) 2013, where the decision to refuse an adjournment was overturned

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2013/267.html

Re GB (Children) 2013, where the refusal of the adjournment was approved.

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2013/164.html

 So, in brief summary, the facts of the two cases :-

 In Re L, the father was having considerable difficulties with his solicitors and things reached the point where they indicated that they were no longer willing to act for him. This happened on the Friday, with the final hearing due to start on the Tuesday. His solicitors conveyed the full set of papers to him on Monday, but he was not at home, having had to set off to make the journey to the town in which the final hearing was to take place.

 The father had sought an adjournment, as although he was ‘wedded to not wanting to return to his previous solicitors, he was also wedded to having legal representation’ and was not seeking to represent himself.

Additionally, and pivotally, there was also a report from a psychiatrist, Dr Bowskill  (this having been a piece of information which caused quite a lot of the disruption between father and his solicitors) and was not presented at the initial final hearing, but was presented to the Court of Appeal.

 

  1. We have what the judge did not have, namely a letter from Dr Bowskill dated 6 September, in which he states shortly but pertinently:

“I have assessed Mr LL and confirm that my opinion is that he is not fit to represent himself in court.”

Beyond that, we have a full medico-legal report from Dr Bowskill dated on its face 20th, but actually signed and dated by the doctor 27 September 2012. What is important is paragraph 7.1, in which the doctor states:

“My opinion is that Mr LL has a Paranoid Personality Disorder, as defined in Section F60.0 in the International Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders, Version 10.”

Then in paragraph 7.10 and 11, he states:

“7.10 Given Mr LL’s Paranoid Personality Disorder, I do not believe Mr LL would be able to represent himself in a useful way in the court process. Judge Compston made his findings without being aware of Mr LL’s Paranoid Personality Disorder.

7.11 My opinion is that the degree of Mr LL’s personality disorder is that he would not be able to rationally respond to and address questions that would be posed to him during the Court process. Indeed, the Court process is likely to exacerbate his feeling of paranoia and persecution.”

 For the Court of Appeal, that tipped the balance –underlining mine

I would not myself conclude that the judge’s decision on 14 August and 15 August fell without the very generous ambit of discretion given to a judge who has to balance on the one hand possible unfairness to the applicant, on the other hand unfairness to the respondent in granting the application, to which must be added the all-important welfare dimension taking into account the interests of the child. Finally, there is the general point of public importance that public funding resources need to be husbanded. A transfer from firm A to firm B usually involves wastage and therefore increase in the ultimate bill to the public purse. And always, there is the risk of delay inherent in granting any adjournment and the additional pressure on the limited resources of the court in filling the time vacated and finding matching time elsewhere.

However, the importance of the fresh evidence must, in my judgment, be recognised. Had that information been available to the Recorder, had he had the letter of 6 September and even more the medico-legal report, he would have recognised that he had before him a vulnerable applicant, disadvantaged as a result of his disorder and one who in the opinion of an expert was simply not fit to litigate unrepresented. Accordingly, if he had available to him information available to this court, it is at the least arguable that he would have reached the contrary decision. Indeed, in my view had he had that material, the application required to be granted, at least to give the applicant a limited opportunity to ensure that the certificate was not lost, but transferred to an alternative firm, who would then simply have the relatively light task of picking up the trial from the point at which all the documentation had been prepared. And Mr Maitland Jones, who had only been stood down from his brief to represent on the 14th, would have been available to be briefed on some other day.

 

 

In Re GB, it seems that the parents lost confidence in their legal team shortly after the Issues Resolution Hearing  (a hearing at which their position was confirmed as being that that parents accepted that the 3 children would not be returning to their care, and that the time estimate for the final hearing was reduced by agreement from 5 days to 2),  but did not obtain fresh representation between the IRH and final hearing and had not taken any steps to do that.

They dismissed their legal representation and sought an adjournment to obtain fresh legal representation, which was refused, and thus found themselves in the position of being litigants in person. [Again the underlining is my own, for emphasis]

  1. Ms Sterling’s case before us today sought to highlight a number of aspects. First of all, the mother’s vulnerability before the court. In doing so, we were handed one page from what is obviously a lengthy report prepared by Mrs Westerman, a clinical psychologist who conducted an assessment of the mother. The page that we have sets out three paragraphs listing the outcome of a number of psychological tests that were undertaken. These indicated that the mother had an elevated score in a number of aspects, in particular in one test on the “paranoid scale of the severe personality pathology scale”. Another result indicated the presence of “depressive and masochistic personality traits”; and, generally, Ms Sterling submitted that these results established or at least strongly indicated that her client was a significantly vulnerable individual and not well fitted, or fitted at all, to be either a litigant in person in any proceedings or, more forcefully, the litigant in person in these proceedings in relation to her own history, her own functioning as a parent and the future of her own children.
  1. Ms Sterling also took us to no less than four occasions in the judgment where the judge either herself expressed the view, or quoted the view of professionals, that the mother lacked “insight” into the difficulties that were being raised against her in the proceedings. Ms Sterling also pointed out that this mother had herself had a very troubled time as a young person in the care system.
  1. As part of the task facing the mother at the hearing, she was required to cross-examine the psychologist who had produced this comprehensive report. Ms Sterling said in terms that it was just wrong for a person such as this mother to be required to cross-examine a psychologist in these circumstances. She said that for the judge to have established a trial where this took place was unfair, unjust and unkind.
  1. In support of the second ground of appeal, Ms Sterling having taken us in her detailed skeleton and in her oral submissions to other matters, stressed that the judgment of the court does not simply deliver the task of deciding what should happen to the three children before the judge in November 2011, it also has an impact upon any future child that this mother might have, because it would be taken as the starting point and given credence by the local authority in deciding whether the mother could be a safe or good enough parent for any future child. The submission was made that there was no urgency in the proceedings before the judge, that there was benefit in time being taken to allow for legal representation; the children were not going to be moving, and indeed have not moved, from the places that they were already established in at the time of the hearing and the judge should have given the mother the adjournment that she sought.
  1. Finally Ms Sterling took us to the detail of the task that the mother faced in conducting the hearing. She described it as a herculean task, not least because of the physical burden of the mother carrying the six or seven bundles of paperwork away with her for the first time from court at the end of the first day, travelling on public transport back to her home, reading them as best she could overnight and returning to court for the 9.30 start on the next morning.
  1. Ms Sterling also said that a reading of the transcript showed that to pack so much into the day and for the judge to hold, as she did at the beginning of the first day, that the hearing would finish “tomorrow” was to put too much pressure on the mother and led to the court driving the case forward at an unacceptable pace during the course of the second day.
  1. I asked Ms Sterling whether any criticism was made of the approach the judge took once the hearing had begun, other than the pace of the process, and to that request Ms Sterling indicated that the way in which the judge simply allowed the mother to ask very long narrative questions of the witnesses was in fact a detriment to the mother; it allowed her, to use Ms Sterling’s phrase, “to rant” in an unfocussed manner which almost became self-defeating of the mother trying to present a positive and wholesome picture to the judge

The Court of Appeal in both cases referred back to Re B and T (care proceedings: legal representation) [2001] 1 FCR 512 and cited the general principles about an adjournment application where the parents had become unrepresented [underlining mine]

 

  1. 45.   “17. The assertion by Mr Miss Booth that art 6 obliged the judge to discontinue on either 12 June or, if not then, on 14 June, seems to me to be an unrealistic submission. In this jurisdiction the proceedings are not adversarial proceedings. The judge always holds an inquisitorial responsibility, It is his difficult task to maintain a balance between the rights of the children to an early determination of their future. The obligation of the judge to avoid delay is expressed in the statute. I cannot see that it could be said that this judge, supremely experienced in this field of work, fell into error in balancing the rights of the children to determination against the rights of the parents to a fair trial. It is not a case in which the parents were denied the opportunity to put their case. It is manifest that the judge endeavoured, to the best of his ability, to ensure that the received the support which is conventionally given by a judge and advocates to unrepresented litigants.

[…]

21. When one considers the requirements of art 6 of the Convention, it is relevant to remember that art 6 requires the entire proceedings to have been conducted on a fair basis. It is not appropriate simply to extract part of the process and look at that in isolation. In this case, as my Lord has said, there had been abundant legal advice and guidance of the most skilled nature available to Mr and Mrs T before the matter came before Wall J. There had also been the possibility, indeed the obligation, to produce further evidence: steps that had not been taken on the instance either of Mr and Mrs T or of those were acting for them. I do not therefore agree that, in assessing the impact of the Convention in this case, one should necessarily start on the day upon which the adjournment was sought, ignoring everything that had gone before. Further, I do not agree that, in proceedings of this nature, in which the children as well as the parents have an intimate and pressing interest, one should look at the question of fairness to the parents in paramount priority to fairness (in terms of a prompt decision, which is another aspect of art) to the children. In the passage that my Lord has read, it is clearly apparent that the judge had, and properly had, the interests of the children well in mind when he was making his decision.

22. However, I put those matters to one side. I will look at the case on the basis upon which Miss Booth put it in support of the submission that art 6 did require a decision, either to adjourn the trial or to stop it at the point that I have indicated. We have to remind ourselves, as I have already said, that art 6 is concerned with the overall fairness of the proceedings. The article itself lays down very few absolute rules. That said, both the jurisprudence of the European Court and simple common sense, of a kind that an English lawyer can immediately identify, do require in general terms that certain elements are present in any judicial proceedings, an obvious example is the right and ability of those concerned in the proceedings to put their case. Here Mr and Mrs T had ample opportunity and occasion, as the judge was satisfied they had done.

23. Another consideration is that there should be equality of arms between the parties but, in my view, that does not mean that there must necessarily be legal representation on both sides, indeed on all sides, more particularly where everybody concerned in the case was acutely aware of the need give every assistance to people who were representing themselves. Provided that the tribunal is itself aware o and constantly reminds itself of the duty of fairness, it is very much a matter for that tribunal, and is recognised in the jurisprudence of the Convention as being to a substantial extent a matter for that tribunal, whether, in all the circumstances, it is able to discharge the case fairly.”

[Just as well, considering what has just happened to legal representation in private law cases, that equality of arms doesn’t mean that if one person has a a lawyer, everyone else should have a lawyer]

So, in Re GB, the Court of Appeal went on to consider whether, drawing on those general principles, the decision to refuse an adjournment was plainly wrong

  1. It therefore seems to me that issues such as the one raised in the present case will of necessity be fact specific; it will be necessary to look at all of the elements that were in play before the judge who decided to adjourn or not adjourn a set of proceedings. The principles are set out in the European decision of Re P and most helpfully set out in Re B and T, as I have indicated.
  1. Applying those matters to the present case, and not underestimating the task that the mother faced in conducting this litigation before the court in the, to her, unexpected event of the court pressing on without granting an adjournment, I consider that the process that was adopted and the decision to press on without an adjournment did not breach the mother’s Article 6 rights to a fair trial, looked at either in terms of the narrow focus of the hearing itself in November or, as we have to do, against the canvas of the proceedings as a whole.
  1. This was a case which turned very much upon the assessments that had been undertaken by the various professionals. Much of the work of teasing out the detail, the strengths and weaknesses of the various family members and the vulnerabilities and needs of the children had been undertaken by professionals over the course of weeks and months, had been reduced to writing and was before the judge. The judge’s decision was very much based upon that material. There is a limit in such circumstances as to how much any advocate, lay or otherwise, can achieve where the body of material upon which the judge will rely is established, and there is no countervailing expert opinion the other way. For example, had the independent social worker instructed on behalf of the parents taken a contrary view then there would have been more room for manoeuvre available to an advocate to present a case; here the evidence was all one way.
  1. Secondly, this was a case where the judge was contemplating delay of already one year from the time the children were removed to foster care. Although they were not going to change their placement or their home if the orders sought were granted, everybody involved with them, and in particular the children insofar as they could understand it, needed to know whether or not these arrangements were going to be for the future, so that they could hunker down and get on with life and the task of growing up or bringing up the children; or, if the children were going to go home, plainly that issue had to be determined so that the moves to move them back to the parents’ care could be undertaken. The judge was therefore justified in attaching a premium to the need to achieve finality in this process.
  1. Although Rule 1.1(2)(c) urges the court to establish an equal footing between parties, that can never be justification of itself for a litigant in person seeking an adjournment and holding that the failure to grant an adjournment is a breach of Article 6 rights.
  1. At each turn a balance has to be struck; it is not a balance that is to be determined under Section 1 of the Children Act under which the child’s welfare would be the court’s paramount consideration, but the court must take account of the child’s welfare and the fair trial needs of the parties to the court, which include the parents but also include the child and, to a lesser extent, the local authority. This was a decision that the judge was particularly well seated to take; she had a prior knowledge of the case and she had indicated at the earlier hearing that no adjournment would be contemplated simply for a change in legal representation to be achieved. In my view, the judge was right to reject the adjournment application.
  1. But that is not the end of the matter. Once the case is proceeding a judge is faced with the difficult judicial task of acting as the judge in the proceedings, of refereeing the court process, but doing so in a way that seeks to meet the need for all parties to be on an equal footing so far as is practicable, notwithstanding that one of them is not legally represented, and in this regard I think the judge conducted herself in a way which was conspicuously helpful in meeting that need. In particular, the judge had been open and clear to the parties by indicating at the previous hearing that there would be no adjournment. The parties were in no doubt that that was the judge’s view and any change that they were going to seek to make in their representation would have to bear in mind that parameter set by the judge.
  1. Secondly, once the judge had decided to press ahead with the hearing she was clear in dealing with the mother as to what was required and, on my reading of the transcript, went out of her way to assist the mother to achieve focussed representation in the terms of choosing which witnesses to call and how they should be questioned. One aspect of this is that, despite the breakdown in the professional relationship between the parents and their lawyers, the judge invited counsel and solicitors for the parents to remain in the court room during the morning of the first day of the hearing. The time came when the court turned to ask the mother which witnesses she would wish to call. At that stage the judge was able to ask the mother to spend a short time out of the court room with her previous barrister and solicitors to obtain their assistance and indeed to consider reinstructing them and returning them to their previous role. The result of that was that a list of witnesses was provided and the mother confirmed that she did not wish to reinstruct the lawyers. The judge’s invitation for the lawyers to remain in the court room seems to me a sensible and proportionate step to have taken.
  1. Most of the witnesses who were called on the second day had in fact been stood down, and again the judge did not stand by the previous order which had simply listed a few witnesses to be called; she exhorted the local authority to obtain as many of the key witnesses as possible and adjourned the case from time to time to assist that process.
  1. During the evidence giving itself, the judge allowed the mother full rein; she did not interrupt the mother with interventions designed to keep the mother on a track that a lawyer skilled in the forensic process should follow; she did not bombard the mother with technical points; instead she allowed the mother simply to say what she wanted to say, and then at a suitable interval the judge would try to focus the witness onto a question or questions arising from what the mother had said.

And thus concluded that taking the principles from Re B and T and the European Court decision in P, C and S v  UK, which is reported in [2002] 2 FLR at 631 and applying the facts of this case, the Court had not been plainly wrong in refusing the adjournment.

 What we don’t have then, is a checklist of what factors tip the balance for granting the adjournment and refusing one.

(I’d suggest that relevant factors would be – the circumstances in which the parent and lawyer parted company, the complexity of the trial, the timing of the separation, what steps the parent has taken to try to get fresh representation, the vulnerabilities of the parent, their ability to conduct the litigation in person if given appropriate support, the impact of delay on the case and the child,  and the timescales for reconvening the hearing. But those are just my suggestions, the Courts haven’t sat down and thrashed out a set of factors]

Of course, this raises the interesting point – in order to properly seek an adjournment, the parent (who is representing themselves, perhaps unwillingly) needs to know of the substance of at least four pieces of case law – Re B and T, P C and S v UK, Re L and Re GB, and to be able to highlight to the Court the facts of their case which put them in the Re L bracket and not the Re GB bracket.   [Good luck with that]

It would seem sensible, where the other parties get advance notice of a parting of the ways, for the relevant cases to be brought to Court and the principles distilled into a short document for the benefit of the Court and the parents.

 The Court of Appeal in Re GB also made some salient points about the delay, it having taken 15 months to get the appeal heard, principally because the appeal had not been issued until the transcript of the hearing had been obtained, and firstly there had been a delay in getting the LSC to fund the transcript and secondly in getting the transcript approved by the original trial judge.

The Court of Appeal encourage parties in a similar position to issue the appeal without the documents and use the force of the Court of Appeal’s directions to hasten the production of those documents.

  1. From this unedifying chronology it seems to me that the following points for future practice can be drawn:

a) The preparation of transcripts, and indeed the obtaining of advance authorisation for the costs of preparation from the Legal Services Commission, may take a significant amount of time. At each turn it is important to ask the question: is the obtaining of this particular transcript an essential pre-requisite before either filing a notice of appeal or indicating that the papers are in order for the permission to appeal application to be considered?

b) Where, as here, time was running on and a further first instance hearing was timetabled, serious consideration should be given to filing the notice of appeal in any event, notwithstanding that one or more plainly essential transcripts is not yet available. Such a step

1) enables the Court of Appeal to support a prompt process by the Legal Services Commission and the transcribers in meeting a sensible timetable;

2) enables the Court of Appeal to contact the first instance judge if necessary to chase up approval of the transcript of judgment; and

3) provides a vehicle via which the proposed appellant may seek a stay of the ongoing court proceedings pending consideration of their application by this court.

c) In a case which is already grossly delayed, the notice of appeal if not already filed must be filed within a matter of a day or so after granting of legal funding and not, as here, some weeks later.

d) the pursuit of transcripts in relation to issues which, at best, are peripheral should not delay progressing the case at least to the stage of consideration for permission to appeal.

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What to do in the interim?

Posted on March 28, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

Interlocutory orders when the Court is faced with disputed allegations of non-accidental injury

Long term readers of this blog will know of the number of cases that have come before the senior Courts in the last year where what seemed compelling evidence for non-accidental injury perpetrated by the parents turned out to have a medical explanation (the rickets/vitamin D cases)   https://suesspiciousminds.com/2012/04/24/subdural-haematomas-fractures-and-rickets/ 

 , a cyst   https://suesspiciousminds.com/2012/10/12/a-tapestry-of-justice/ 

 or where the Judge didn’t like either of the competing theories and fell back on the burden of proof,   https://suesspiciousminds.com/2012/05/04/a-county-council-v-m-and-f-2011/  

or where the Court just felt that the injuries just lay outside current medical knowledge and could not be explained   https://suesspiciousminds.com/2012/12/20/what-does-donald-rumsfeld-have-to-do-with-paediatric-head-injuries/ 

and I have speculated about when we might get a case that says what a Court are supposed to do with interlocutory applications for removal, when faced with serious allegations of non-accidental injury and the parents say “well, there’s a whole other possibility, which is that we have done nothing wrong and the child should remain with us”

Well, now we have such an authority, the Court of Appeal considering this very issue in Re B (Children) 2013  

http://www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed112720

The Judge at first instance had heard the application for an Interim Care Order and removal, and refused it, and the Local Authority appealed.

There were two fractures, and the radiological evidence was that there was not an organic cause and that they were likely to be non-accidental in nature.

The parents were arguing that the fracture had occurred in hospital during an examination, and marshalled other arguments as well.

The Judge at first instance accepted that there were matters on both sides of the equation and that a finding of fact hearing would be necessary to come to a determination of the causation of the injury, but that [as the Court of Appeal say] a significant body of evidence pointing to the distinct possibility (I deliberately use a relatively neutral description) that L had sustained non-accidental injuries.  

The Judge’s exact wording was

“I make it plain that there are plainly on the evidence matters which might be going in the opposite direction.  But it appears to me that both of these fractures and the circumstances surrounding them suggest that there are grounds for believing that one or the other of the parents may have caused those injuries.”

The issue really was, having crossed the interim threshold, for the purposes of section 38 (which with the above formulation was plainly crossed and was not in dispute) ; but mindful that the ultimate issue of causation was not yet resolved and was in considerable dispute,  should the Court go on to make Interim Care Orders, or should he, as he in fact did, make Interim Supervision Orders allowing the two children to be at home pending the finding of fact hearing.

The Court of Appeal were pretty clear that they did not want to strike a new formulation of the test for removal [nonetheless, I like the way that they put it, which is a reset to Re B’s much clearer test than the murkier waters the authorities later dipped a toe into]

23. So, with that caveat that this is not intended to be in any way a reformulation of the test with regard to interim care orders, one might say that it is the welfare of the child that dictates the result, that dictates the order that the judge should impose at the welfare stage of an interim hearing.  The welfare is, as HHJ Murdoch says, the court’s paramount consideration and what the court is looking for is whether the child’s welfare demands that he or she should be removed immediately from his or her parents’ care for his or her safety or whether, putting it another way, removal from their care is a proportionate response to the circumstances as they appear to be to the court.  In carrying out that evaluation the court must, as HHJ Murdoch said, bear in mind the welfare checklist set out in section 1(3) of the Children Act.

The Court of Appeal then look at what the Judge laid on the other side of the scales  [underlining is my own, as that is the key passage]

. When the judge went on to consider the welfare issue, he said this at paragraph 33:

“When, however, I come to look at the second stage of the decision making process at this hearing, I must look at the matter in the round.  I must look at the existence of arguments which go in the other direction in respect of the femoral fracture and the possibility that there is that the findings at the fact finding hearing in February may not be to the effect that non accidental injury has been caused.”

40. One might have expected that that passage in the judgment would then have been followed by an enumeration by the judge of the various features which gave the judge reassurance in placing the children with the parents in the interim period or at least a closer examination of the risk that there was to the children in the parents’ care, including the features that gave rise to concern, not just in the shape of the medical evidence available so far but also the other matters such as the existence of the 31 January incident and the absence of injury whilst under the supervision of the grandparent or, subject to a hand swelling which is noted in the clinical records, in the care of the foster parents.

41. In short one would have expected the judge, faced with the seriousness of the injuries which L had suffered so far and which he had found there were grounds for believing had been caused by one or the other of the parents, to go on at that point to explain why nevertheless he felt the risk was one that he could take.  One would have expected him at that stage, I think, to have explained what he thought the risk was and what, if any, he thought was the chance of such harm as the children risked actually happening, whether it was predictable as to whether it would happen and what protective features there were in the case that would guard against it.  The judge does not go on to deal with matters in that way. He sees the matter in terms of a balance between the risk of physical harm and the risk of harm to the children’s bond with their parents.  He clearly arrived at the view that the risk of the harm to the bond was greater than the risk of the physical harm, but he does not explain in his judgment how it was that he arrived at that evaluation.  Given the gravity of the circumstances here I see that as a fundamental flaw in his evaluation of the matter or at least in his articulation of how he saw the respective risks.

42. We were asked to say that no judge could have arrived at the decision that was arrived at in this case.  I am reluctant ever to say never in a family case, because each case depends upon a sophisticated mixture of the particular facts in the particular case.  I may have taken a lot of persuasion to have countenanced a return of children in circumstances such as these, but I would not translate that into saying that no judge could take that course.  But what a judge would need to do in those circumstances is to spell out very clearly why it was that he felt that the risk could be taken.  That is missing from this judgment and I would therefore overturn the decision made by the judge and would hear further submissions, insofar as those are necessary, with regard to what needs to happen next.

 

That is very different, of course, from suggesting that there is a burden on the parent to satisfy the Court that the risks are low or manageable, but of course in reality, given that the Local Authority (and often the Guardian) are putting the case that the risks are not manageable, it will be for the parents advocate to make sure that the Judge is given evidence and reasons for taking that course of action.  The risk of separation and the harm that might cause is not, in and of itself sufficient.

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David North – a peculiar story you have probably never heard of

Posted on March 25, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

Let me take you back to 1950s America, and specifically Illinois.  At EasternIllinoisStateTeachers College, classes were run in Home Economics.  Twelve students would live in a home on campus and learn how to run a house and how to manage the domestic science aspects of doing so. 

 One of the College administrators [Dr Schmalhausen – and yes, if you are thinking that this name reminds you of Allo Allo, you may be right *] had the bright idea that if there was an infant to care for, that would be a really good way of replicating the task of a mother caring for a child and working the domestic duties around that.  (This was the 1950s, remember, and those sorts of concepts which seem overtly sexist to us now, were not viewed as peculiar at those times)

 

*[It was Von Smallhausen, Herr Flick’s sidekick…]

 von smallhausen

 

The College duly acquired a baby, who would otherwise have been given up for adoption; the very first one was called “Margaret Ann” and was given the surname “North”  – another later followed, this time a boy , who they called “David North”.  This was in 1952.

 

By the way, in case you are thinking that the baby came into the campus for a few hours a week, or a couple of days a year, no, this infant lived there full time, and all of their needs were met by the students.

 

 

So these infants lived in the campus homes, and received care from the twelve students who would be studying domestic science that year. There would be three students each academic quarter, so the child would have three primary carers and then acquire three brand new ones after three months, and so on. Nobody really seemed to have given any thought to what being used as a teaching prop would do for a child who needed a permanent and stable home.

 http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/homeEc/lg/C9_5_Domeconpg130.htm

 

[Note in this prospectus the proud boast that “Each of Cornell’s two practice departments is equipped with a real baby”  – also that the babies were given nicknames and weren’t even addressed by consistent names]

 

This came to the attention of Illinois child welfare services, and their boss Roman Haremski  [yes, that does look a lot like Roman Harem… this story is packed with good names]  after a newspaper article appeared, which was generally positive about the scheme, and they were exceedingly unhappy about the arrangement.

 

This is what the paediatrician who looked at the case thought   “The infant boy is in excellent physical condition. He has received physical care which is far superior to that given in the best foundling homes and in most American homes. Furthermore he is loved, which is the basic factor in the healthy developmental environment. This child has benefited tremendously from the good start he is receiving and will show it for years to come…”

The controversy was a clear two sided argument. Haremski and the Child Welfare Services believe that a child’s environment in the first year of life was pivotal to its development of character. They argued that being separated from its mother would be damaging to a child’s personality, but to be surrounded by twelve mothers would be even more confusing. Haremski thought the baby was being used like a textbook as an experiment in the study of home economics. He was also extremely concerned with the lack of a male father figure in this baby’s situation, especially for a baby boy. He threatened to intervene legally, arguing that Eastern Illinois State Teacher’s College did not hold a license to act as a child welfare agency.

Dr. Schmalhausen’s argument countered each of Haremski’s points. The love and care the baby was receiving from its “twelve foster mothers” would be much less damaging to his overall personality than being returned to its unwed mother only to be placed in a group home. She indicated that the problem of not having a father figure would still exist in either situation. David’s condition on campus at least provided him with the care of doting mothers

 

The nation’s media, including Time magazine, the New York Times ran with the story and it became something of a national controversy. [With the passage of time, it seems a bit inconceivable now that there were people stacking up behind the College and feeling that it was a good thing , but there was a division of opinion as to who was right]

 

Despite all this controversy, baby David stayed at the College and his care continued to be provided by batches of four mothers at a time, for three month periods, before having a fresh batch of four student mothers.  Because the College had entered into a private arrangement with David’s birth mother, it was not an adoption, and they did not need the licence.  The furthest the Illinois Welfare department was able to go was to say that they would not assist the College in finding any more babies for the teaching programme.

 

More babies were acquired, as it was newborn infants that the College really wanted, and even after the national publicity, it wasn’t until 1960 that the College stopped having live babies as a teaching aid for their students.

It doesn’t seem that anyone ever did any follow up studies on the children who spent their infant years receiving primary care from 12 different carers who would come and go, and were providing this care as part of their education rather than any desire to provide the infant with a home. 

Having said that, the medical studies that were being done in America  about whether children were being screwed up or damaged were not terribly great or accurate in the 1960s  – for example David Reimer (who suffered genital damage in some surgery, and a psychologist, John Money, recommended that he be instead raised as a girl and never told that he had been born a boy. This was exciting for the psychologist, because he believed that gender identity was entirely a product of environment and learned behaviour and even more so because David had a twin brother as a control.)

 John Money over many years wrote all sorts of research on how gender identity is not innate or biological but learned… unfortunately, John Money was utterly wrong about how wonderfully easy it would be for poor David to adjust to this fundamental change.  That didn’t stop his theories on the malleability of gender being the prevailing medical view for several years because he was misreporting how awfully the experiment was actually playing out for this poor child, and indeed his sibling.

 http://www.shb-info.org/reimer3.html

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