RSS Feed

Tag Archives: burden of proof

Mostyn J gets dissed by Court of Appeal despite not being the Judge in the case being appealed

Posted on July 26, 2018 by suesspiciousminds

 

Re A Children 2018

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2018/1718.html

Long-time readers will have been enjoying the regular frank exchange of views and pleasantries between Mostyn J and the Court of Appeal, but this is a new one.  The Court of Appeal in this case overturned a Judge who had been following Mostyn J’s guidance in a High Court case and therefore had the opportunity to say that Mostyn J was wrong as a sideswipe.

 

Did they resist this?

Reader, they did not.

 

  1. In A County Council v M & F, upon which the judge relied, Mostyn J having set out passages from Re B (and Baroness Hale’s confirmation of Re B found in Re S-B [2010] 1 All ER 705, SC,) went on:
    1. “16. Thus the law sets a simple probability standard of 51/49, but the more serious or improbable the allegation the greater the need, generally speaking, for evidential “cogency”. In AA v NA and Others [2010] 2 FLR 1173, FD, I attempted to summarise these principles at para 24:

17. Thus, it is clear that in all civil proceedings P cannot be set higher than a scintilla above 0.5. The various judicial statements that a more serious charge requires more clear evidence is not an elevation of P > 0.5. The requirement of evidential clarity is quite distinct from an elevation of the probability standard. Were it otherwise, and, say, an allegation of rape or murder of a child made in civil proceedings required P to be set at > 0.6 then one could end up in the position where a court considered that P in such a case was, say 0.51 but still had to find that it did not happen; when, as a matter of probability, is was more likely that not that it did. This would be absurd and perverse. P must always be set at > 0.5 in civil proceedings, but subject to the proviso that the more serious the allegation so the evidence must be clearer.”

  1. With the greatest respect to the erudition of Mostyn J’s arithmetical approach to the application of the ‘simple balance of probabilities’, I do not agree that it represents the appropriate approach, and it seems to me that this passage had, in part, led the judge to decide that, in order to determine whether the local authority had discharged the burden of proof to the necessary standard, he had to adopt the same approach. As a consequence, the judge mistakenly attached a percentage to each of the possibilities and thereafter, added together the percentages which he attributed to an innocent explanation and before concluding that, only if the resulting sum was 49% or less, could the court make a finding of inflicted injury

 

Perhaps envisaging a ‘says who?’ response to their very polite (if you are not a lawyer) ground and pound of Mostyn J, the Court of Appeal pre-empt this

 

  1. In A County Council v M & F Mostyn J had drawn on the shipping case of The Popi M ( Rhesa Shipping Co.S.A. v Edmunds, Rhesa Shipping Co.SA v Fenton Insurance Co Ltd) [1985] 1 WLR 948 HL,(Popi M) as an example of ” the burden of proof coming to the rescue”[18]. Lord Brandon, in his celebrated passage in Popi M, in declining to apply the dictum of Sherlock Holmes to the effect that “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth” said:
    1. “The first reason is one which I have already sought to emphasise as being of great importance, namely, that the judge is not bound always to make a finding one way or the other with regard to the facts averred by the parties. He has open to him the third alternative of saying that the party on whom the burden of proof lies in relation to any averment made by him has failed to discharge that burden. No judge likes to decide cases on burden of proof if he can legitimately avoid having to do so. There are cases, however, in which, owing to the unsatisfactory state of the evidence or otherwise, deciding on the burden of proof is the only just course for him to take.

The second reason is that the dictum can only apply when all relevant facts are known, so that all possible explanations, except a single extremely improbable one, can properly be eliminated

  1. Recently (and after A County Council v M&F), in Nulty Deceased v Milton Keynes Borough Council [2013] EWCA Civ 15, [2013] 1 WLR 1183 Lord Justice Toulson (as he then was) considered the use of an arithmetical approach to the standard of proof. Having first considered Popi M he went on:
    1. “33. Lord Brandon concluded, at 957, that the judge ought to have found simply that the ship owners’ case was not proved.

34. A case based on circumstantial evidence depends for its cogency on the combination of relevant circumstances and the likelihood or unlikelihood of coincidence. A party advancing it argues that the circumstances can only or most probably be accounted for by the explanation which it suggests. Consideration of such a case necessarily involves looking at the whole picture, including what gaps there are in the evidence, whether the individual factors relied upon are in themselves properly established, what factors may point away from the suggested explanation and what other explanation might fit the circumstances. As Lord Mance observed in Datec Electronics Holdings Limited v UPS limited [2007] UKHL 23, [2007] 1 WLR 1325, at 48 and 50, there is an inherent risk that a systematic consideration of the possibilities could become a process of elimination “leading to no more than a conclusion regarding the least unlikely cause of loss”, which was the fault identified in The Popi M. So at the end of any such systematic analysis, the court has to stand back and ask itself the ultimate question whether it is satisfied that the suggested explanation is more likely than not to be true. The elimination of other possibilities as more implausible may well lead to that conclusion, but that will be a conclusion of fact: there is no rule of law that it must do so. I do not read any of the statements in any of the other authorities to which we were referred as intending to suggest otherwise.

35. The civil “balance of probability” test means no less and no more than that the court must be satisfied on rational and objective grounds that the case for believing that the suggested means of causation occurred is stronger than the case for not so believing. In the USA the usual formulation of this standard is a “preponderance of the evidence”. In the British Commonwealth the generally favoured term is a “balance of probability”. They mean the same. Sometimes the “balance of probability” standard is expressed mathematically as “50 + % probability”, but this can carry with it a danger of pseudo-mathematics, as the argument in this case demonstrated. When judging whether a case for believing that an event was caused in a particular way is stronger than the case for not so believing, the process is not scientific (although it may obviously include evaluation of scientific evidence) and to express the probability of some event having happened in percentage terms is illusory.

36. Mr Rigney submitted that balance of probability means a probability greater than 50%. If there is a closed list of possibilities, and if one possibility is more likely than the other, by definition that has a greater probability than 50%. If there is a closed list of more than two possibilities, the court should ascribe a probability factor to them individually in order to determine whether one had a probability figure greater than 50%.

37. I would reject that approach. It is not only over-formulaic but it is intrinsically unsound. The chances of something happening in the future may be expressed in terms of percentage. Epidemiological evidence may enable doctors to say that on average smokers increase their risk of lung cancer by X%. But you cannot properly say that there is a 25 per cent chance that something has happened: Hotson v East Berkshire Health Authority [1987] AC 750. Either it has or it has not. In deciding a question of past fact the court will, of course, give the answer which it believes is more likely to be (more probably) the right answer than the wrong answer, but it arrives at its conclusion by considering on an overall assessment of the evidence (i.e. on a preponderance of the evidence) whether the case for believing that the suggested event happened is more compelling than the case for not reaching that belief (which is not necessarily the same as believing positively that it did not happen)”.

  1. I accept that there may occasionally be cases where, at the conclusion of the evidence and submissions, the court will ultimately say that the local authority has not discharged the burden of proof to the requisite standard and thus decline to make the findings. That this is the case goes hand in hand with the well-established law that suspicion, or even strong suspicion, is not enough to discharge the burden of proof. The court must look at each possibility, both individually and together, factoring in all the evidence available including the medical evidence before deciding whether the “fact in issue more probably occurred than not” (Re B: Lord Hoffman).
  3. In my judgment what one draws from Popi M and Nulty Deceased is that:
  5. i) Judges will decide a case on the burden of proof alone only when driven to it and where no other course is open to him given the unsatisfactory state of the evidence.

ii) Consideration of such a case necessarily involves looking at the whole picture, including what gaps there are in the evidence, whether the individual factors relied upon are in themselves properly established, what factors may point away from the suggested explanation and what other explanation might fit the circumstances.

iii) The court arrives at its conclusion by considering whether on an overall assessment of the evidence (i.e. on a preponderance of the evidence) the case for believing that the suggested event happened is more compelling than the case for not reaching that belief (which is not necessarily the same as believing positively that it did not happen) and not by reference to percentage possibilities or probabilities.

  1. In my judgment the judge fell into error, not only by the use of a “pseudo- mathematical” approach to the burden of proof, but in any event, he allowed the ‘burden of proof to come to [his] rescue’ prematurely.

 

I’m sure that Mostyn J is delighted by the dismissal of his P>0.5 formulation as ‘pseudo-mathematical’

 

The case they were talking about is one I wrote about here

 

https://suesspiciousminds.com/2012/05/04/a-county-council-v-m-and-f-2011/

 

but for my part, the more troubling one, where the mathematics (or pseudo-mathematics) applied to the balance of probabilities directly affect the outcome is here  (three years later, building on Re M and F  and building on the Popi shipping law case but overlooking the Nulty civil negligence about a fire and electrical engineering  law case)

 

https://suesspiciousminds.com/2014/02/07/mostyn-tacious-a-judgment-that-makes-your-temples-throb/

 

Anyway, the soup and nuts of both of them is that Mostyn J looked at a variety of explanations, malign and benign for incident X and then ascribed percentages to them, and saying whilst the malign explanation might be more likely than not than any individual benign explanation, he was instead totalling up the chance he had ascribed to each of the benign explanations and deciding that he could not say that the chance of malign explanation was higher than all of the possible benign explanations added together.  So what he was doing was saying  ‘There are 3 explanations. I think that the most likely of those three is that mother did this.  But if I ascribe percentage possibilities to each option, I might still decide that the two alternative explanations add up to more than 50%, so I’m not able to say that mother did this’

 

Anyway, the Court of Appeal say that the Court should not get into such esoteric exercises and simply say that on the balance of probabilities what do they say is the more likely than not explanation for event X.  Which is good news for anyone who doesn’t want to take a course in probability theory.

 

This case is desperately sad, even by care proceedings standards  – a ten year old girl is found dead. The police assume accidental strangulation by falling off a bunk and getting trapped in decorative netting. Poppi Worthington style errors are made in the investigation, and then evidence comes to light suggesting that the ten year old had been sexually assaulted (there is talk of DNA being present in intimate areas) and concerns then arise that the ten year old either hung herself intentionally or was killed  (deliberately or unintentionally as part of choking).  That obviously had massive implications for the other five children of the family.

At final hearing, the Judge concluded that the evidence that the girl was sexually assaulted was made out, but he could not say who perpetrated the assault  (there’s some odd wording about why the LA were refused their request to call the police officer who analysed the DNA samples) and whether it might be member of extended family or an intruder.  The Judge found that despite some conflicting expert evidence about causation of the death  (the medical research is that accidental strangulation happens rarely and to much much younger children) he was not able to make a finding that the malign explanation outweighed each of the possible benign explanations. Threshold was not met, the other five children went home.

The Court of Appeal concluded that

 

  1. In my judgment the judge fell into error, not only by the use of a “pseudo- mathematical” approach to the burden of proof, but in any event, he allowed the ‘burden of proof to come to [his] rescue’ prematurely.
  3. In my judgment the judge had failed to look at the whole picture. Not only did he fail to marry up the fact that S sustained two sets of injuries (one of which was fatal) but the judge, faced with the incontrovertible evidence in relation to the genital injuries, carried out no analysis of the available evidence in order to see whether an accident (for example) was a likely cause. Whilst in other circumstances I might have identified, or highlighted by way of example, certain evidence which I believe merited consideration by the judge, given my view that the appeal must be allowed and the matter remitted for rehearing, it would not be appropriate for me to comment further.
  5. Only if, having carried out such a comprehensive review of the evidence, a judge remains unable to make findings of fact as to causation, can he or she be thrown onto the burden of proof as the determinative element.
  7. In my judgment, in this most difficult of cases and in the most trying of circumstances, the judge failed to carry out such an analysis before relying on the burden of proof. This, when coupled with the erroneous conclusions of the judge in respect of the genital injuries and his failure to give those injuries any weight when considering whether S died as a consequence of an inflicted injury, must, in my judgment, lead to the appeal being allowed and the order set aside.
  9. I have considered with a deal of anxiety whether the case should be remitted given the lapse of time and that the family are reunited. I have however come to the unequivocal conclusion that it must. If S was killed other than by accident or suicide, it happened in that household and no one has any idea how or in what circumstances it came about. This is not a case, tragic and serious though that would be, where a child may have been shaken in an understandable momentary loss of self-control by an exhausted parent. This was a 10 year old child, and if it was the case that her death was caused by some unknown person strangling her with a ligature, the risk and child protection issues in respect of her surviving sister and brothers cannot be over stated. Traumatic though a fresh trial would be, it cannot be viewed as other than a proportionate outcome if, as they say is their intention, the local authority pursues the case.

 

That’s obviously a dreadful state of affairs either way.  Either something awful and malicious happened to this ten year old, in which case children were wrongly returned to the care of the parents  OR it didn’t, and having secured the return of their five surviving children having been under awful suspicion the parents have to go through it all again.  That’s unbearable however it turns out.

5 Comments

Posted in case law and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Law for social workers (Part 1)

Posted on August 18, 2016 by suesspiciousminds

This piece is aimed at social workers, but it isn’t exclusively for them. Basically, the law has moved very fast in care proceedings since I started writing this blog, and on Twitter yesterday there was a conversation about there not being an easy place for social workers to find out what they now need to know.  So the idea here is two short(ish) pieces that tell you all of the important legal principles and then in part 2, what the specific tests are for each sort of order.

 

None of this is intended to be a substitute for getting legal advice from your own lawyer, it is just a guide to what sort of things the Court is looking for, and what tests they are applying. If you’re very confident about the basics, you can skip to Part 2  (though not immediately, because I am still writing it!)

 

The Acts

 

We all know, I think, that there are two main pieces of legislation involved in care proceedings.

 

The Children Act 1989

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/41/contents

 

and The Adoption and Children Act 2002

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/38/contents

 

There are a few others that come up occasionally – the Mental Capacity Act 2005,  the Care Act 2015, the Children and Families Act 2014 and various mental health Acts, Housing Acts, if you’re really really unlucky Education Acts.  And of course, the Human Rights Act 1998 permeates everything. In terms of the Human Rights  Act – the big bits that you need to know is that a social worker, as part of the State, owes parents duties under the Human Rights Act – they owe parents an article 6 right to fair trial (which is not limited just to Court, but involves fairness in all decisions) and interference by the State with parents Article 8 rights to private and family life, which can only be done where it is PROPORTIONATE and NECESSARY.

 

Key principles of the Acts

 

  1.  The Child’s Welfare is the Court’s paramount consideration when making any decision – it won’t be the only consideration, but it is the main one.
  2. The Court can only make an order if satisfied that doing so is better for the CHILD than making no order  (the ‘no order principle’)
  3. Any delay is harmful to the child, and has to be justified (the ‘no delay principle’)
  4. The Court should try to make the least serious of the orders available to it, if that will meet the child’s needs  (‘the least interventionist principle’)
  5. There’s a set of guidance of the main issues for the Court to consider when making decisions about children – the Welfare Checklist. Parliament has given us that as a valuable toolkit to reach the right decisions, and you stand the best chance of making the right decisions if you use it.

 

And from Human Rights, the key principles are :-

FAIRNESS  – in all decisions, strive to be fair – take things into account, even when they don’t fit with your hypothesis or initial thoughts, listen to what parents have to say, be honest about what you are seeing, recognise change when it is happening, be willing to consider that you might be wrong. Try to approach the task of working with a family in the way that you would hope someone would work with you if the roles were reversed. Recognise that for a parent, the State can be a scary and powerful force – you might not feel powerful yourself, but be alive to the possibility that that is the way the State can come across. Imagine someone coming into YOUR home, looking in YOUR cupboards, criticising YOUR relationship. It might need to be done, but be aware that it doesn’t feel nice to be on the receiving end.

NECESSITY – is it NECESSARY to do X or Y?  Not just is it helpful or useful or desirable, but did it NEED to be done? And even if it NEEDED to be done, did it NEED to be done in that particular way?

PROPORTIONALITY – looking at what you’re worried about and what you want to do about it, and thinking hard about whether what you want to do is proportionate to the worries that you have.

All of those principles really boil down to being a REASONABLE person – if you are reasonable, and try to do the job in a REASONABLE way, the Court’s are more likely to be receptive to what you’re saying and you are going to be less exposed in the witness box than someone who goes around like a bull in a china shop.

 

The threshold criteria

 

In order for the Court to make an Emergency Protection Order, or a Care Order or Supervision Order, or Interim Care Orders or Interim Supervision Orders, they need to be satisfied that the threshold criteria is met. If there’s no threshold criteria, the Court CANNOT make the order.

The burden of proof (who has to prove it) is on the Local Authority. It is for the Local Authority to PROVE that the child has suffered significant harm, or is at risk of such harm, NOT for the parent to prove that the child isn’t.

The standard of proof (how sure does the Court need to be) is the BALANCE OF PROBABILITIES.  If a Court thinks that something is MORE LIKELY THAN NOT to have happened (in percentage terms 50.000001% or higher) then that is sufficient.  If a Court thinks that the LA has NOT proved that, even if there’s a 49.99999999% chance of it having happened, then in law it did NOT happen. When it comes to factual issues, the law is binary – if it is MORE LIKELY THAN NOT to have happened, then it happened, if not, it DIDN’T.  And if it is exactly 50-50 (which doesn’t happen often, but it HAS happened) then the burden of proof means that the LA failed to prove it was more likely than not, so it DIDN’T happen.

The threshold criteria itself

 

s31 (2)A court may only make a care order or supervision order if it is satisfied—

(a)that the child concerned is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm; and

(b)that the harm, or likelihood of harm, is attributable to—

(i)the care given to the child, or likely to be given to him if the order were not made, not being what it would be reasonable to expect a parent to give to him; or

(ii)the child’s being beyond parental control.

 

The likely to suffer has been quite tricky to resolve over the years – basically, if you’re going to say that a child is LIKELY to suffer significant harm, you need to :-

 

(a) Prove some facts

(b) Prove that those facts mean that there is a risk of significant harm

(c) Prove that it is MORE LIKELY THAN NOT that the risks involved ‘cannot sensibly be ignored’

 

So you don’t HAVE to show that the risk is MORE LIKELY THAN NOT to materialise.  Sometimes, if the level of the possible risk would be very serious, there can be a lesser chance of it happening as long as there is a FACTUAL basis for saying that the risk exists and it cannot be ignored.

 

Case law

The Acts themselves only give you so much – most of the legal arguments are about how to intepret those Acts – what precisely does such and such a word mean, what has to be taken into account when deciding whether such and such applies. Rather than different Courts across the country having the same arguments over and over and coming to different decisions in different places, when an important point of principle is decided  (for example – WHEN does the threshold criteria have to be satisfied? When proceedings were issued? When they finish? What if the child was in foster care for 2 months before issue – the child wasn’t at any risk in that placement…)  a senior Court – the High Court, the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court decides a case that deals with that point, and that’s the answer from then on  (in this example, threshold has to be satisfied when the Local Authority ‘took protective measures’  – that could be by issuing, or it could be by a section 20 placement or written agreement)

The next time THAT issue comes up, the Court is able to say ‘well, that’s been decided now, there’s a PRECEDENT for it, and we’ll follow that’.   The Children Act has been around for over 25 years and you would think that all of these technical and interpretation questions would have been sorted out years ago now, but they still keep coming, and occasionally the interpretations change or shift a bit.

For basically ALL of the things that a social worker might want to do, or ask the Court for, knowing what the Act itself says is just the tip of the iceberg. The really important information, and the wording that you are working to is set out in case law.  And as I said, it changes.

 

Part 2 is going to tell you what the current case law says about the various tests – and I’ll keep this up to date when it changes. The law is moving quickly at the moment, particularly in relation to adoption.

 

 

I hope this has been useful, feel free to pass it on, email it around, print it out and stick it on notice boards.

If this is your first encounter with Suesspicious Minds – normally there is more sarcasm and 80s pop culture, and weird cases that might make you wince or cry or laugh, so pop in again.

 

If you enjoyed the piece, or the blog, please visit the website about my book, and if it takes your fancy, pre-order it.  I’m 85% of the way to getting it published now, thanks to loads of support and help from very cool people. Be like Fonzie and be cool too.

 

https://unbound.com/books/in-secure

 

13 Comments

Posted in case law and tagged , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Who has the burden of proof?

Posted on May 25, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

Well, that’s a stupid title for a blog post.  The burden of proof  – whose job it is to prove whether something happened, and whose job it is to persuade the Court to make the order is the applicant. In public law cases, that’s the Local Authority (the social workers).  It isn’t the parents job to prove that they didn’t injure a child, or that the Court should NOT make a Supervision Order. It is well known, and requires no thought or analysis at all by a lawyer – all of us know that already.

There is, of course, a reason why I am asking that question in the title.  It is because a High Court decision has just emerged that makes me call that obvious truism into question.

Here’s the issue – in a case where consideration is being given to a child being removed from a parent under an Interim Care Order, there’s a specific question to be answered. That is, does the child’s safety require immediate removal.  And in deciding whether to make any order at all, the Court has to consider that the child’s welfare is paramount.  So, a Court won’t make an ICO with a plan of removal unless (a) the child’s safety requires immediate removal and (b) the order is the right thing for the child.  The burden of proof would be on the applicant, the social worker.

 

In the case of Re N (A Child: Interim Care Order) 2015 decided by His Honour Judge Bellamy, but sitting in the High Court, here is how the social worker answered those questions.

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2015/40.html

 

46.         On the key issue of removal, the social worker said that in her opinion ‘N’s immediate safety does not require separation’. On the contrary, she considers that any changes in the current care arrangements ‘will be detrimental to N’s well-being and emotional safety’.

 

So, no the child does not REQUIRE separation as a result of immediate safety risks, and no the child’s removal would not be in the child’s best interests.

 

If the Local Authority case was that the two tests were not satisfied (and that was the evidence given), and the burden of proof falls on them, then the order can’t be made, surely?

Well, that’s why this case is challenging, because the Court DID make the Interim Care Order, did say that that the child’s safety requires immediate separation and did say that separation would be in the child’s best interests.

Hmmm.

Let’s look at this logically. The ultimate decision as to whether the two tests are met is of course the Judge. If the social worker had said “yes, the test is met”, that isn’t the end of it. A Judge can hear all of the evidence and come to a different conclusion.  So, surely the reverse must also apply – if a Judge hears all of the evidence and DOES think that the tests are made out, he or she does not have to accept the evidence given by the social worker as being right, or determinative.

The Judge can, as here, decide that the social worker’s analysis of risk and what is best for the child is wrong.  It would obviously be wrong for a Judge, if they felt that, to simply ignore it and not give their own judgment and reach their own conclusions.

That’s the pro argument for a Judge making an ICO where the LA case hasn’t been made out on their own evidence.

The con argument is that the burden of proof is there for a reason – it is for the LA to prove their case. By the end of their evidence, they ought to be over the line. Yes, a parents evidence might retrieve the situation for the parents case and lead to a decision that the right thing is something else. Or the parents evidence might make the LA’s case even stronger. But by the time the LA close their case, there ought to be enough evidence to say “Yes, looking at everything at this snapshot moment, the tests are made out”.  If the LA case isn’t made out by the time they close the case, and reliance is placed on the later evidence of the other parties, that is smacking of a reversal of the burden of proof.

Otherwise, why have a burden of proof at all? After all, hardly any cases end up exactly 50-50, with the Judge unable to make a decision, with the burden of proof being the final feather that tips the scales.  (The only family case I’ve ever seen like that is the Mostyn J one  A County Council v M and F 2011  https://suesspiciousminds.com/2012/05/04/a-county-council-v-m-and-f-2011/ ) so the burden of proof is more than simply how to settle a tie, it has to be about more, surely?

 

The case here is further complicated, because it wasn’t the Local Authority asking for an Interim Care Order and removal.  It is one of those cases that started as private law proceedings, the Court became increasingly concerned about the child’s well-being  (to be honest, the FACTS of this case probably warrant their own blog post and discussion – in a very short summary, they are about whether the mother had been indoctrinating the child into a form of Jehovah’s Witness belief and practice which was making it impossible for him to have a relationship with his father who did not hold those beliefs – it was an intolerance for non-believers that was the key issue, rather than what the mother and the child were choosing to believe in a positive sense) and made a section 37 direction. And an Interim Care Order with a direction to the Local Authority that the child should be removed and placed in foster care.

That order was the subject of an appeal, and the ICO was stayed pending that appeal. Five months passed, and the LA reported in the section 37, saying that they did not seek removal at an interim stage, but did intend to issue care proceedings. Mother withdrew her appeal.

Care proceedings were issued, and this contested ICO hearing came about as a result of a request from the child’s Guardian.

So, the LA weren’t seeking the ICO, or separation. Although both could only come about as a result of the application that they had lodged for a Care Order.  So, was the burden of proof here on the Local Authority (who had applied for a Care Order) or on the Guardian (who was asking the Court to make an ICO and sanction removal)?  Or was it an application that the Court simply had to hear and determine?  I am honestly a bit legallly stumped on this. My brain says that the legal burden of proof has to be on the party seeking the order, so the Guardian. Just as within care proceedings where the LA is the applicant, a party seeking an adjournment has the burden of proof to persuade the Court to grant the adjournment, even though a formal application might not necessarily be lodged.

An additional complication here was that the LA were saying that not only did they not want an ICO and did not want the power to remove the child, they didn’t intend to exercise that power even if the Court sanctioned it.

In essence, the LA were saying that the religious messages being given to this child were messing him up, but that removing him from mother at an interim stage might mess him up even more. It might make his relationship with his father even more damaged, if he blamed his father for him being taken away from mother and put in foster care.

 

Given that all of this arose from the Judge originally making an ICO and sanctioning a plan of separation, who had the burden of proof for that order?  It seems opaque.  One presumes that the Court was being invited to do this by one of the parties, so the burden would fall upon them. But what if the Court was doing it of their own motion? Then the burden of proof falls upon the Court, who become then both player and referee in the contest.  The section 37 ICO power is a very practical way to allow the Court to intervene to protect a child who seems to be at risk, but as the case law on removal has developed over the years, section 37 ICOs become something of an anomaly. It is very difficult to see how a Court making one of its own motion can avoid a perception that having raised it as a possibility themselves it is then fair to determine an application that they themselves set in motion…

 

The case is complicated STILL FURTHER, because both the LA and the mother indicated that IF the Judge was to make an ICO with a recommendation for removal, in the teeth of the LA saying that they did not want it, they would each appeal.

The Court however felt that the risks did warrant making an ICO and that the child ought to be removed, even if the LA were not willing to do so.

 

I am satisfied that N has suffered emotional harm. The social worker agrees. I am satisfied that the fact that N has been immersed by his mother in her religious beliefs and practices has been a significant factor in causing that emotional harm. The social worker is not convinced. I am satisfied that since the hearing last November N has continued to suffer emotional harm. The social worker agrees though attributes this to the conflict between the parents, not to religious issues. I am satisfied that in the absence of significant change in N’s circumstances there is a risk that he will continue to suffer harm.

  1. Since the shared care order was made N has suffered and continues to suffer significant emotional harm. If the present arrangements continue I am in no doubt that N will continue to suffer that harm. Persisting with the present shared care arrangement is not in his present welfare interests at this moment in time.
  2. I am not persuaded that placement with father is appropriate. For the reasons articulated by the guardian, I accept that the likelihood is that placement in the father’s primary care would have an adverse impact on N’s relationship with his father.
  3. I am satisfied that the change required is that N be removed from the care of his parents and placed with experienced foster carers.
  4. The social worker disagrees. As a result of the position taken by the local authority, if I make an interim care order there is no certainty that the local authority will remove N and place him in foster care. There is no clarity as to the time it will take local authority managers to decide how to respond to an interim care order. If they do not respond positively there could be an impasse between the court and the local authority. For the local authority, Mr Sampson has already indicated that if removal is required he anticipates that the local authority will consider whether there are grounds for appeal. Even if the local authority did not seek leave to appeal, experience suggests that the mother would seek leave. The last time she did so the appeal process took three months. The final hearing of these care proceedings is fixed to take place in mid-August. Against that background, acknowledging the uncertainty about whether an order requiring N’s removal into foster care would be implemented ahead of the final hearing, should the court adopt what might be called the ‘pragmatic’ approach and defer a decision about removal until the final hearing or should the court put that uncertainty to one side and make an order which reflects its assessment of the child-focussed approach required by s.1 of the Children Act 1989?

 

The Judge felt empowered by the remarks of the Court of Appeal in Re W  (the Neath Port Talbot case) in imposing a care plan on a Local Authority who were resistant to it. The Judge concludes that if he makes an ICO with a care plan of removal, the LA’s reaction to it if they disagree must be to appeal and seek a stay NOT to refuse to execute it.   (I think that respectfully, the Judge is wrong there, but I’ll explain why in a moment)

 

         In resolving that issue I derive assistance from the decision of the Court of Appeal in Re W (A Child) v Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council [2013] EWCA Civ 1277. In that case the first instance judge made an assessment of risk which the local authority did not accept. On appeal, the question for the court was whether the judge was wrong to have made a care order on the basis of a care plan with which she did not agree and in the circumstance that the order was opposed by both the local authority and the mother. The leading judgment was given by Lord Justice Ryder. The following passages from his judgment are relevant to the problem which I have identified:

  1. The courts powers extend to making an order other than that asked for by a local authority. The process of deciding what order is necessary involves a value judgment about the proportionality of the State’s intervention to meet the risk against which the court decides there is a need for protection. In that regard, one starts with the court’s findings of fact and moves on to the value judgments that are the welfare evaluation. That evaluation is the court’s not the local authority’s, the guardian’s or indeed any other party’s. It is the function of the court to come to that value judgment. It is simply not open to a local authority within proceedings to decline to accept the court’s evaluation of risk, no matter how much it may disagree with the same. Furthermore, it is that evaluation which will inform the proportionality of the response which the court decides is necessary.
  2. …Parliament has decided that the decision is to be a judicial act and accordingly, the care plan or care plan options filed with the court must be designed to meet the risk identified by the court. It is only by such a process that the court is able to examine the welfare implications of each of the placement options before the court and the benefits and detriments of the same and the proportionality of the orders sought…
  3. …The decision about the proportionality of intervention is for the court…It should form no part of a local authority’s case that the authority declines to consider or ignores the facts and evaluative judgments of the court. While within the process of the court, the State’s agencies are bound by its decisions and must act on them.

 

  1. There is a second issue and that relates to the extent of the court’s power to enforce an interim care order requiring removal in circumstances where the local authority disagrees with that plan and comes to the decision that although it is content to share parental responsibility it is unwilling to remove because, notwithstanding the court’s evaluation, it considers removal to be disproportionate. The law is clear. Although the Family Court dealing with care proceedings can make a care order (whether a final order or an interim order) and express its evaluative judgment that the child should be removed and placed in foster care, it has no power to order removal. If the local authority decides not to remove the child the only mechanism for enforcement of the court’s evaluative judgment is by separate process in the form of judicial review.
  2. On this issue, in Re W (A Child) Ryder LJ makes the following observations:
  3. …once the no doubt strong opinions of the parties and the court have been ventilated, it is for the family court to make a decision. That should be respected by the local authority. For the avoidance of doubt, I shall be more plain. If the local authority disagree with the judge’s risk evaluation they must in a case where it is wrong appeal it. The appellate court will be able to consider such an appeal, where that is integral to the order or judgment of the court. If the welfare evaluation is not appealed then it stands and the local authority must respect it and work with it while the proceedings are outstanding. To do otherwise risks disproportionate, irrational or otherwise unlawful conduct on their part.
  4. There is no purpose in Parliament having decided to give the decision whether to make an order and the duty to consider the basis upon which the order is made to the judge if the local authority that makes the application can simply ignore what the judge has decided and act as if they had made the decision themselves and on a basis that they alone construe.

 

  1. In Re W (A Child) the issues related to a final care order. In this case I am concerned not with a final care order but with an interim care order. Does that make a difference? In my judgment it does not. The observations made by Ryder LJ are equally relevant to interim orders. Parliament has determined that it is for the court and not the local authority to evaluate, on the basis of its assessment of the evidence, whether an interim care order on the basis of removal into foster care is necessary and proportionate. The way to challenge that decision is by appeal and not by decision of senior managers not to remove.

100.     At the hearing in November I came to the clear conclusion that in light of the emotional harm N had suffered and was continuing to suffer it was proportionate and in N’s best welfare interests for him to be removed into foster care under an interim care order. As a result of the mother’s appeal against that order (an appeal which was subsequently withdrawn) N has remained in the care of his parents. Six months later, I find that N has continued and still continues to suffer emotional harm in the care of his parents. I am in no doubt that the child-focussed approach required by s.1 of the Children Act 1989 requires that he be removed from the care of his parents and placed in foster care without further delay. I accept that steps which may now be taken by the local authority and/or the parents may have the effect that my order may not be implemented ahead of the final hearing in August. I am satisfied that that possibility should not deter me from making orders which I consider to be in the best interests of N’s immediate welfare. I shall, therefore, make an interim care order. I make it clear that that order is premised upon an expectation that the local authority will immediately remove N and place him in foster care

 

 

I don’t think that this strong reading of the dynamic between Court and LA  survives either the statute, the House of Lords decision on starred care plans or the President’s own guidance in the Court of Appeal case of Re MN (an adult) 2015 which corrected any misapprehension that might have been caused by Re W a child.   (I have always felt that Re W went far too far with its concept of mexican stand-offs and judicial reviews, and that Re MN puts the relationship between judiciary and Local Authority on care plans in the correct way)

https://suesspiciousminds.com/2015/05/07/mn-adult-2015-court-of-appeal-pronouncements/

 

  • It is the duty of any court hearing an application for a care order carefully to scrutinise the local authority’s care plan and to satisfy itself that the care plan is in the child’s interests. If the court is not satisfied that the care plan is in the best interests of the child, it may refuse to make a care order: see Re T (A Minor) (Care Order: Conditions) [1994] 2 FLR 423. It is important, however, to appreciate the limit of the court’s powers: the only power of the court is either to approve or refuse to approve the care plan put forward by the local authority. The court cannot dictate to the local authority what the care plan is to say. Nor, for reasons already explained, does the High Court have any greater power when exercising its inherent jurisdiction. Thus the court, if it seeks to alter the local authority’s care plan, must achieve its objective by persuasion rather than by compulsion.
  • That said, the court is not obliged to retreat at the first rebuff. It can invite the local authority to reconsider its care plan and, if need be, more than once: see Re X; Barnet London Borough Council v Y and X [2006] 2 FLR 998. How far the court can properly go down this road is a matter of some delicacy and difficulty. There are no fixed and immutable rules. It is impossible to define in the abstract or even to identify with any precision in the particular case the point to which the court can properly press matters but beyond which it cannot properly go. The issue is always one for fine judgment, reflecting sensitivity, realism and an appropriate degree of judicial understanding of what can and cannot sensibly be expected of the local authority.
  • In an appropriate case the court can and must (see In re B-S (Children) (Adoption Order: Leave to Oppose) [2013] EWCA Civ 1146, [2014] 1 WLR 563, para 29):

    “be rigorous in exploring and probing local authority thinking in cases where there is any reason to suspect that resource issues may be affecting the local authority’s thinking.”

    Rigorous probing, searching questions and persuasion are permissible; pressure is not.

 

The Court can, as explained in the next passages of Re MN, give a judgment setting out how they perceive the risks and how they could best be managed, and invite the LA to file a care plan addressing those matters. BUT, if there remains resistance, the Judge cannot compel the LA to remove.  The Court CANNOT dictate to the Local Authority what the care plan is to say.

The division of powers is very plain – the Local Authority CANNOT remove a child unless there is a Court order and the Court decides whether to grant such an order. But the Court cannot impose a removal on a Local Authority who do not want to remove.

Of course, in a very practical sense, a Judge who gives a judgment saying that having heard and tested the evidence, he considers the child to be at danger if the child were not removed, places the LA in a huge predicament. If the Judge is right  on his analysis of risk (and Judges get paid to be right and to analyse risk), and something goes wrong, then the LA will be absolutely butchered at an Ofsted Inspection, a civil claim, a Serious Case Review or heaven forbid, an inquest. It really is an “on their head be it” issue.

It would be a courageous Local Authority who took a judgment forecasting dire consequences for a child and sanctioning removal and decided not to remove. But it has to be their choice. That’s the responsibility that they have.

The LA and mother both said that they would appeal this decision. I would expect that appeal to be successful, based on a reading of Re MN (a child) 2015. However, if the appeal is chaired by Ryder LJ, who had those strong views in Re W that the Court could exert considerable pressure on a LA to change their care plan and woe betide them if they did not,  then I would expect them to lose the appeal.  And frankly, I  personally think that each of the major Appeals on the use or misuse of section 37 ICOs, the Court of Appeal has got each of them badly wrong, so I would not be marching down to the bookies on any prediction.

 

I wonder if the Court of Appeal will clarify the burden of proof issue, or whether it will just get bogged down in who has bigger muscles to flex on care plans, Courts or Directors of Social Services?

 

5 Comments

Posted in assessment of risk, case law, emotional harm and tagged , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Terminating parental responsibility – the appeal

Posted on March 28, 2014 by suesspiciousminds

Re D (A Child) 2014

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2014/315.html

 

In this case, the Court of Appeal were hearing father’s appeal against Baker J’s decision to use the power in s4(2A) of the Children Act 1989 that a father’s parental responsibility can be removed from him by order of the Court.

 

John Bolch over at Family Lore has done a good piece on this.

http://www.familylore.co.uk/2014/03/d-child-fathers-appeal-against-order.html

 

The legal power is

4(2A) A person who has acquired parental responsibility under subsection (1) shall cease to have that responsibility only if the court so orders.

 

The father in this case was not the most edifying man. He is serving a prison sentence for sexual offences against women. The mother, having ended that relationship wanted nothing to do with him, but from prison the father was making applications for contact with their child.

There are two big arguments in this case  (a) If that s4(2A) power exists, then there must be circumstances in which the Court can use that power, and why not in a case like this?   OR (b) the power in the Act is draconian AND discriminatory, since it presently allows for a mother to ask the Court to discharge father’s PR for bad behaviour, but a father can never do the same against the mother.

[It is for the latter reason that I find myself on father’s side as a matter of law, although my sympathies in this case all lie with the mother]

 

The problem for dad’s team was that the nub of that argument, that s4(2A) is discriminatory to men has already been shot down by the European Court of Human Rights

 

The question of the differential treatment of married and unmarried fathers by the statutory scheme is not before this court for consideration. Neither mothers nor married fathers can have their parental responsibility removed. That was the issue in Smallwood v UK (29779/96) (1999) 27 EHRR CD 155, an admissibility decision of the Commission in which it was held that the difference in treatment between mothers, married and unmarried fathers in the context of the jurisdiction of the court to make an order which removes an unmarried father’s parental responsibility is not a violation of article 8 ECHR [the Convention] taken in conjunction with article 14. On that basis the father in this case was refused permission to appeal on the question of whether the differential treatment was proportionate and whether section 4(2A) CA 1989 was incompatible with the rights set out in articles 8 and 14 of the Convention.

 

Damn. So dad’s team had to take a different tack

 

 

  • The grounds of appeal upon which permission was granted are that:

 

 

 

i) the judge failed to distinguish Re P to have regard to the principles set out in the Human Rights Act 1998 [HRA 1998], the ACA 2002 and the changing social norms over the 18 years since Re P; 

ii) the judge failed to consider whether the mother had discharged the burden of proof so as to establish the allegation that the father was “a sexual recidivist”; and

iii) the judge failed to make a proportionate order or take into account the asserted policy consideration that applications of this kind should not be allowed to become “a weapon in the hands of a dissatisfied mother”.

 

[i.e that “there might be some cases in which it is proportionate and necessary to terminate father’s PR but (a) they should be very very rare and (b) this isn’t it”]

 

Having had to fight, as a result of Smallwood v UK, with one hand tied behind their back, it is not surprising that dad’s team did not succeed.

On the final point, the ‘this could open the floodgates’ one, the Court of Appeal archly point out that two such orders in 25 years doesn’t suggest that the family Courts are about to be besieged by s4(2A) applications.

 

The burden of proof thing is an unusual and intricate argument – in effect it is that the burden of proof falls on the person making the allegation (they have to prove it, the subject of the allegations doesn’t have to disprove it  – a concept that seems entirely lost in LASPO…).

These are the facts that Baker J found, having heard all of the evidence (the important thing here is that some of these findings were his own conclusion rather than mum making allegations and the Court finding them proven)

 

  • The second ground of appeal relates to the judge’s findings of fact and the value judgments he came to upon which he based his ultimate conclusion. So far as the former is concerned this court would have to be satisfied that the judge was plainly wrong in the factual determinations to which he came, that is that there is no objective basis for the same on the evidence that he heard and read, otherwise they will be immune from review. The judge had the benefit “of reading and hearing all of the evidence, of assessing not only the credibility and reliability of the witnesses but also their characters and personalities and the professionalism of the professional witnesses, of living and breathing the case over so many days …” (Re B above at [205]). This court will be very hesitant indeed to interfere in that process.

 

 

 

  • It is plain from the transcript that Baker J carefully considered the factual and opinion evidence in coming to his conclusions. It cannot be said that he was wrong to reject the expert evidence that he heard from the jointly instructed psychologist having found that his evidence was naive, complacent, unreliable and at times misleading. He made the following findings about the father:

 

 

 

i) the nature and extent of the facts associated with the father’s criminal convictions included penetrative sexual abuse, inciting a child to engage in penetrative sexual activity, engaging in sexual acts with a child, causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and three sexual assaults; 

ii) he had vacillated over the years between accepting the truth of those facts and asserting his innocence and was presently again asserting that he had been wrongly convicted;

iii) his account of what he called a false confession was wholly unconvincing with the consequence that he had not satisfied the burden under section 11(2) of the Civil Evidence Act 1968 of proving that he had not committed the offences for which he was convicted;

iv) his persistent denials of the validity of the convictions meant that he had repeatedly lied to professionals and to the court (and by implication to his family including his son as that was the factual basis upon which he presented himself to the court);

v) he had lied when he denied giving a previous account to the respondent when he told her that he had been abused in the past by his brother;

vi) having regard to the Lucas direction which the judge gave himself, the father’s lies called into question his reliability as a witness (see R v Lucas [1981] QB 720).

 

  • On the facts that he found, the judge was entitled to conclude (at [51]) that:

 

 

“as he continues to deny his culpability for the devastating acts of abuse he perpetrated on the family, I think it highly unlikely that he appreciates the damage he has caused to every member of the family, or the danger of further damage should he have any further involvement with the family”

 

In this case, it was Baker J who made the finding that father was a sexual recidivist, and the argument was thus that mum (who benefited from the finding) hadn’t had the burden of proof in establishing it.  It would be fair to say that the Court of Appeal didn’t care for that submission.

 

  • It is superficial to say that in this case D’s father has not inflicted harm directly on his child and that therein lies a distinction with Re P which ought to have led to a different conclusion. D’s father inflicted devastating emotional harm on the whole family including D which he continues to deny. It is difficult to see how in that circumstance and in the absence of any other positive factors, the father can be said to be capable of exercising ‘with responsibility’ his parental rights, duties, powers, responsibilities and authority.

 

  • It is likewise wrong to say that the mother has failed to satisfy the burden of proof of facts relating to father’s alleged sexual recidivism. That is a submission that is becoming ever more prevalent in this court with the advent of parties who are not represented at first instance and who can be excused for not understanding the significance of either the burden or standard of proof. So the submission goes, if a party who has the benefit of a finding from the court has not been put to the obligation of proving it, what the court has done is to subtly reverse the burden of proof. I make it clear this is a distinct submission from one which calls into question whether someone has not had the benefit of procedural protections to which they are entitled.

 

  • Provided that procedural protections are identified and used by the court, the process of fact finding in family proceedings is quasi-inquisitorial. The welfare of a child may sometimes require a judge to make decisions about facts and/or value judgments that are not asked for by either party. A judge cannot shrink from doing so. That is his function. He must identify such questions and where necessary decide them. Although identified in relation to a different supervisory jurisdiction, the quasi-inquisitorial process to which I have referred was considered and approved in its use by the family courts in public law children proceedings and must as a matter of good practice be available to the same inquiry in private law children proceedings: In the Matter of W (A Child) [2013] EWCA Civ 1227 at [36]:

 

“Although it is conventional to speak of facts having to be proved on the balance of probabilities by the party who makes the allegation, proceedings under the 1989 Act are quasi-inquisitorial (quasi-inquisitorial in the classic sense that the court does not issue the process of its own motion). The judge has to decide whether sufficient facts exist to satisfy the threshold (the jurisdictional facts) whether or not the local authority or any other party agree. Furthermore, the basis upon which the threshold is satisfied is a matter for the judge, not the parties. To that end, if the judge directs that an issue be settled for determination, then absent an appeal, the issue will be tried whatever any party may think about that. As Pitchford LJ said in R (CJ) v Cardiff City Council [2012] 2 All ER:

[21] … The nature of the court’s enquiry under the 1989 Act was inquisitorial. To speak in terms of a burden of establishing precedent or jurisdictional fact was inappropriate.

[22] … I am persuaded that the nature of the inquiry in which the court is engaged is itself a strong reason for departure from the common law rule which applies a burden to one or other of the parties … The court in its inquisitorial role, must ask whether the precedent fact existed on a balance of probability.”

 

Interesting – the suggestion there is that if mum had alleged that father was a sexual recidivist, the burden of proof would be on her, but where as here, the Judge makes the finding of his own motion arising from the evidence heard, there is no burden of proof – it is just the STANDARD of proof that we are concerned with. Was it more likely than not to be the case, and the Court of Appeal saw no reason to deviate from this.  [It is such a narrow technical point that I don’t see it coming up very often, but the Court of Appeal have slammed that door shut]

 

Of course, the sort of circumstances (Father injured a child, father is a sexual offender) found here in the two cases where PR was removed don’t come up all that often in private law, but they are rather more common in care proceedings – where of course the mother is represented, will have the powers of s4(2A) explained to her and might be under pressure from professionals to distance herself from father. Might we see that more often in care proceedings?

 

9 Comments

Posted in case law, private law and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Once you have eliminated the impossible

Posted on October 24, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

 

Is Sherlock Holmes’ maxim applicable to fact finding hearings? The Court of Appeal take a look

 

A (Children) [2012] EWCA Civ 1278

 

As all Holmes fans know, the Great Detective opined  “Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”  *    [see footnote]

 

 

[Gratuitous Cumberbatch photo, for the female followers of this blog, including the Great Fiancee]

In this finding of fact hearing, involving a fatality to a child, the father, who ended up with the finding of fact being made against him, appealed in part on the basis that the Judge had approached this sort of formulation.

 

http://www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed102912

 

The Court had determined that the child had, on the balance of probabilities, suffered an injury.

 

It had then determined that the only 3 possible perpetrators were the mother, the father or an elder child ‘C’.   

 

The father claimed that what then happened was in effect that the Court ruled out mother and C as potential perpetrators and thus came to the conclusion that the father, being the remaining suspect must be the perpetrator, rather than carrying out the identical form of scrutiny.

 

(i.e, that had the Judge considered the order of suspects differently, and approached matters with a fresh eye, he might have ruled out father, then C, leaving mother; or any other sequence.  And that it just so happened that this order of events left father as ‘last man standing’. It was unfair to father to not have the same impartial eye testing whether he should be ruled out, and the burden effectively shifting to being for him to provide evidence why he WAS NOT the perpetrator)

 

 

It is probably fair that I give you now, Lady Justice Black’s concluding paragraph

 

23. I simply add this: that this is a case which we have considered very much on its own facts; nothing that I have said should be taken in any way to alter the established formulation of the law applicable to cases such as this. 

 

So perhaps the case is useless for anything other than determining the appeal that was before them, but I respectfully think that it is of interest because the precise forensic approach of how the Court approach the ‘whodunnit’ element of a finding of fact hearing, having established that something was done, and who the potential perpetrators are, is very important, and anything that adds to our pool of understanding as to the right or wrong way to go about it is therefore useful.

 

 

This is how the Court of Appeal record the Judge’s decision-making process

 

4. So this was a heavy trial for the judge, and it is manifest that all its concentration was upon the facts, the investigation of all relevant facts and the establishing on the balance of probabilities of the crucial facts.  That the law played no great part in the process is, I think, demonstrated by the fact that the judge deals with it in two short paragraphs.  In paragraph 28 he said:

“In these proceedings a party seeking a finding of fact bears the burden of proving it on the balance of probability: Re B (Children) (Care Proceedings: Standard of Proof) [2008] UKHL 35.  Accordingly, where I record facts or make findings, I am satisfied that they are more probable than not.”

5. In he following paragraph 29 he only added:

“Where a number of individuals might be responsible for a known injury, the test for whether it is established that a particular individual was involved is whether there is a real possibility they caused the injury: Re S-B Children [2009] UKSC 17.”

6. So, moving on from that early and brief direction, the judge explains himself essentially in paragraphs 170 and following under the subheading “Responsibility for B’s injuries”.  He considers first the position of B’s mother. He sets out in paragraph 170 under seven numbered paragraphs the matters that he was taking into account in reaching the conclusion that B was in good health when mother left the house and that he was injured in her absence. Having reached that conclusion it is not surprising that in paragraph 171 he said:

“I therefore find that M was not present when B was injured, and further that she does not know how the injuries occurred.”

7. In paragraph 172 he turned to consider the father’s position, saying:

“I turn to consider whether F’s explanation that C caused B’s injuries is credible.  If it is not, the inescapable conclusion is that they were caused by F.”

And then in paragraph 173 he set out what he described as being the combination of a large number of circumstances necessary for C to have injured B in the way that the father suggested.  There are 22 subparagraphs of such factors.

8. In paragraphs 174 and 175 he considered the father’s credibility generally as well as specifically, and he concluded that the father was an unconvincing witness.  However, in paragraph 176 he said:

“176. In assessing F’s evidence, I remind myself that although I disbelieve it, the consequence is not that he is inevitably responsible for the injuries.  Lies may be told for other reasons.  The burden of proving responsibility remains on those that allege it.”

9. In paragraph 177 he considered possible explanations for untruthfulness that would not be in any way probative of causation.  In paragraphs 178 and 179 he then states and explains his fundamental conclusion.  He said:

“178. My ultimate conclusion in relation to C is that there is no real possibility that he caused B’s injuries.  A possibility that is remote on the medical evidence alone is vanishingly improbable in the light of the evidence as a whole.  I reject F’s case.

179. I find that F caused B’s injuries.  I reach this conclusion by eliminating the only possible alternative and by rejecting F’s account.”

 

 

The father submits that paragraph 179 is effectively a reversal of proof, and placing the burden on the father to show that he was not the perpetrator, rather than on the Local Authority to prove to the requisite standard that he was.

 

 

The Court of Appeal considered that the argument was skilfully drawn, but rejected it nonetheless   (largely because of the way that the Judge at first instance had balanced matters)

 

10. Now Mr King’s principal criticism is of paragraph 172, which I have already cited.  He submits that this amounts to an implicit reversal of the burden of proof.  The submission is skilfully advanced and is certainly worthy of careful consideration, but it has to be taken in the context of the passage as a whole, all the paragraphs from 172 to 179, the relevant passages of which I have already cited.  It seems to me that what the judge was saying in paragraph 172 was that he had to consider whether the father’s explanation that C caused B’s injuries was a real possibility — was it plausible? — and that was certainly a permissible and indeed a sensible approach.

11. Mr King has submitted that essentially the judge has pinned the label of responsibility on the father by a process of elimination.  He has first eliminated the mother, then he has eliminated C, and therefore he has, as it were, reached the only remaining possible conclusion.  I see that that submission is also open to Mr King given that the judge has specifically said:

“I find that father caused B’s injuries. I have reached this conclusion by eliminating the only possible alternative.”

12. He might have put alternative into the plural but I do not think that that is fair to the judge overall.  He had to reach a realistic conclusion; he had to be as specific as the evidence permitted; and overall it seems to me that the conclusion was well supported by evidence and was acceptably reasoned.  Mr King has said that there was no medical evidence to force the judge’s conclusion and that there was no other evidence to force the judge’s conclusion, and that accordingly the judge should more safely have announced that there was a real possibility that the father committed the injury, but no more than a real possibility. 

13. That is essentially putting his primary submission in other words, and it does not lead me to doubt the conclusion that I have already expressed on his primary submission. 

14. It will be, I have no doubt, Peter Jackson J who conducts the second stage of this trial.  It may be that he will be persuaded to admit the police records that Mr King highlights.  In passing, I note that there seems as yet to be no explanation as to why they are belatedly produced.  That is something that requires no further speculation.  There can be no doubt at all that the kick injury inflicted by C on the carer is a subsequent development.  There can be no doubt at all on the authorities that the judge at the second trial is not only entitled but bound to have regard to that subsequent development.  Authority is equally clear that it is open to him to reconsider his earlier stated findings of fact, if he is persuaded that the subsequent development is sufficiently material.  With that observation I would dismiss this appeal.

 

It does seem to me, on the basis of that, that IF the Judge had approached it in the way father was suggesting of :-

 

  1. I have found that the child was injured
  2. I have found that this injury could only have been caused by M, F or C
  3. I have found that it could not have been caused by M
  4. I have found that it was not caused by C
  5. Therefore it was caused by F

 

(rather than 5 – “my analysis of the evidence given by F and the features of the case are such that I find F caused the injury”)

 

that this would have given rise to a successful appeal.

 

And therefore, the Holmes maxim DOESN’T apply to the law. The Court have to consider all of the various possibilities   (That it was M, that it was F, that it was C, that it is one of them but it is not possible to say whom, that it was one of two of them but that “X” is excluded)  and determine which is the correct finding, based on the evidence.

 

As we saw from Justice Mostyn’s decision earlier this year, https://suesspiciousminds.com/2012/05/04/a-county-council-v-m-and-f-2011/

   it is peculiarly lawful for the Court to examine the two possible explanations for the child’s injuries and to discount both as being inherently implausible and fall back on the burden of proof as being the determining factor.   The authority that gave rise to that, was of course, a shipping case. Shipping cases nearly always are at the bottom of any important legal principle  (that or runaway milk horses or pensioners consuming ginger ale)

 

[All of the principles in Re SB   http://www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed47645  still apply, of course – that it isn’t for the judge to dance on the head of a pin in trying to establish who caused the injury and if the evidence does not allow for a definitive finding, the Court should not exonerate one parent simply because another seems more likely. ]

 

i) “If the evidence is not such as to establish responsibility on the balance of probabilities it should nevertheless be such as to establish whether there is a real possibility that a particular person was involved. When looking at how best to protect the child and provide for his future, the judge will have to consider the strength of that possibility as part of the overall circumstances of the case”; ii) judges should avoid attributing the relative probability of who is responsible for harm where they are unable to identify a perpetrator and iii) when a perpetrator is identified there is a risk that the judge gets it wrong but that risk cannot be used to conclude that there is a risk to the child. However it was also

“Important not to exaggerate the extent of the problem. It only really arises in split hearings…… In a single hearing the judge will know what findings of fact have to be made to support his conclusions both as to the threshold and as to the future welfare of the child.”

 

 

 

 

* The Great Detective, when making this maxim, probably did not envisage just how improbable the improbable explanations for fictional crimes could become. My personal favourite, Harry Stephen Keeler, for example, managed to concoct an explanation for a murder that involved a strangler midget who disguises himself as a baby, and who descended in a portable personal helicopter to commit a murder in which a man was found dead in the middle of a field of fresh snow with only his own footprints leading to or from his body. 

 

http://home.williampoundstone.net/Keeler/Home.html 

 

I do heartily recommend Mr Keeler if you are a little jaded with traditional murder mysteries and want to glimpse what life would be like if you were somehow able to turn your brain to a totally different angle.

 

I am also reminded of the lovely Raymond Chandler anecdote, where in the midst of filming  “The Big Sleep”,  the director, Howard Hawks, telephoned him and frantically asked,  “Mr Chandler, I have a problem in the film. I simply can’t work out who killed the chauffeur”  and Chandler had to confess that he too had no idea either.  Read the book, it really is completely unresolved. Other than that, it is a flawless piece of writing, which dazzles on every page.

14 Comments

Posted in case law, fact finding and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.