Tag Archives: Court of Appeal

Payne v Payne – rumours of my death have been much exaggerated

Posted on August 7, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

But now, it looks as though they are finally correct.

If you aren’t familiar with Payne v Payne, it was a Court of Appeal decision about a mother wanting to leave the country with a child and start a new life abroad. The Court of Appeal had provided a set of questions to be posed

 

“(a) Is the mother’s application genuine in the sense that it is not motivated by some selfish desire to exclude the father from the child’s life?…. Is the mother’s application realistic, by which I mean, founded on practical proposals both well researched and investigated? …

(b) Is [the father’s opposition] motivated by genuine concern for the future of the child’s welfare or is it driven by some ulterior motive…What would be the extent of the detriment to him and his future relationship with the child were the application granted? To what extent would that be offset by extension of the child’s relationships with the maternal family and homeland?…

(c) What would be the impact on the mother, either as the single parent or as a new wife, of a refusal of her realistic proposal?…”

 

You can see that those questions drive the Court in many cases to approve the mother moving to say Australia, even though the impact on the child’s relationship with father would be devastating.

 

Payne v Payne would have to go down as one of the least-loved decisions of the Court of Appeal, and occasional efforts are made by the Court of Appeal to backtrack from it – although with difficulty, because it would have needed a Supreme Court decision or a change in statute to do so categorically.

 

The usual efforts have been to create a new category of case to which Payne v Payne doesn’t apply.  And so many Court hearings are taken up with debate as to whether the case before the Court is a  “K v K” case, or a “Re Y” case or a “Payne v Payne” case   (and that taxonomic debate can have a huge bearing on the outcome)

“[60]. There is another lesson to be learnt from this case. Adopting conventional terminology, this was neither a ‘primary carer’ nor a ‘shared care’ case. In other words, and like a number of other international relocation cases, it did not fall comfortably within the existing taxonomy. This is hardly surprising. As Moore-Bick LJ said in K v K, “the circumstances in which these difficult decisions have to be made vary infinitely.” This is not, I emphasise, a call for an elaboration of the taxonomy. Quite the contrary. The last thing that this very difficult area of family law requires is a satellite jurisprudence generating an ever-more detailed classification of supposedly different types of relocation case. Any move in that direction is, in my judgment, to be firmly resisted. But so too advocates and judges must resist the temptation to try and force the facts of the particular case with which they are concerned within some forensic straightjacket. Asking whether a case is a “Payne type case”, or a “K v K type case” or a “Re Y type case”, when in truth it may be none of them, is simply a recipe for unnecessary and inappropriate forensic dispute or worse. It is to be avoided.”

 

For almost the entire time that Payne v Payne 2001 has been authority, Judges have been making speeches deprecating it and forecasting that it would be properly overturned.

In the snappily named   Re F (A child) (International Relocation Cases)(DF and NBF) 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2015/882.html

 

The Court of Appeal overturn the decision of a Judge who had followed the Payne v Payne test and posed those questions in the judgment. Not because the case had been wrongly classified as a Payne v Payne rather than K v K or Re Y, but just because the Court of Appeal rule that the proper approach IN ALL Children Act cases is to follow the welfare paramountcy principle as the major factor, with adherence to the guidance given by the Courts in authority cases but never losing sight of the fact that the welfare paramountcy principle is, erm, paramount.

This is one of those cases that we are seeing a lot with the Court of Appeal as it is presently constructed  – the case before it is used as a vehicle to deploy new policy, rather than any real argument that the Judge in a particular case was “wrong”  instead it is the Court of Appeal using a particular case as a method of delivering a binding speech about policy for similar cases in the future.

 

I am not sure how a Judge could be “wrong” in considering, as this Judge did, all of the relevant authorities on relocation, applying those principles and answering within the judgment the questions that Judges are told to ask themselves and answer.   Any Judge could have been unlucky enough to be overturned on this, as the Court of Appeal had just been waiting for a good opportunity to put an end to Payne v Payne.

 

 

43. Reduced to the barest essentials the guiding principles and precepts are as follows. The welfare of the child is the paramount consideration. That is the only true principle. In deciding, in a case such as this, where a child should be located it is necessary for the court to consider the proposals both of the father and of the mother in the light of , inter alia, the welfare check list (whether because it is compulsorily applicable or because it is a useful guide) and having regard to the interests of the parties, and most important of all, of the child. Such consideration needs to be directed at each of the proposals taken as a whole. The court also needs to compare the rival proposals against each other since a proposal, or a feature of a proposal, which may seem inappropriate, looked at on its own, may take on a different complexion when weighed against the alternative; and vice versa.

  1. For the reasons given by my Lord, in the present case the judge’s reliance on the Payne v Payne criteria led her away from carrying out the necessary overall welfare analysis that was needed

 

If you are a proper law geek and you are wondering how the Court of Appeal can strangle Payne v Payne when it was a Court of Appeal decision and stare decisis applies  (i.e the Court of Appeal is bound by Court of Appeal decisions unless the Supreme Court or statute changes), then here is the answer

 

 

  1. The ratio of the decision in Payne was more nuanced in the sense that the questions were always intended to be part of a welfare analysis and were not intended to be elevated into principles or presumptions. Regrettably that is not how they were perceived and the best intentions of the court were lost in translation. The caution expressed by Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss P in Payne went unheeded, namely that guidance that had been derived from authorities such as Poel v Poel [1970] 1 WLR 1469 was being expressed in “too rigid terms” and ‘unduly firmly’ with an over emphasis on one element of the case. I respectfully agree with her and with the benefit of hindsight the continued use of the Payne guidance by courts without putting it into the context of a welfare analysis perpetuated the problem.
  2. Furthermore, in the decade or more since Payne it would seem odd indeed for this court to use guidance which out of the context which was intended is redolent with gender based assumptions as to the role and relationships of parents with a child. Likewise, the absence of any emphasis on the child’s wishes and feelings or to take the question one step back, the child’s participation in the decision making process, is stark. The questions identified in Payne may or may not be relevant on the facts of an individual case and the court will be better placed if it concentrates not on assumptions or preconceptions but on the statutory welfare question which is before it, to which I will return in due course.
  3. The approach which is now to be applied could not have been more clearly stated than it was in Re F where Munby LJ said at [37] and [61]:

    “[37] There can be no presumptions in a case governed by s 1 of the Children Act 1989. From the beginning to the end the child’s welfare is paramount and the evaluation of where the child’s interests truly lie is to be determined having regard to the ‘welfare checklist’ in section 1(3)”

    “[61] The focus from beginning to end must be on the child’s best interests. The child’s welfare is paramount. Every case must be determined having regards to the ‘welfare checklist’, though of course also having regard, where relevant and helpful, to such guidance as may have been given by this Court”

 

 

For those, such as Ian (Forced Adoption) who are not fans of the word ‘holistic’, there’s a bit at the end of the judgment where McFarlane LJ who has inadvertenly popularised the term rather deprecates its overuse (and misuse). He points out that it is not a new or novel creation, but a restoration of the way that the law had worked and decisions HAD been made before a “linear method” had taken hold and moved us away from a proper practice of looking at the whole of the relevant evidence and issues and making a decision that was in the child’s best interests.

 

  1. The word ‘holistic’ now appears regularly in judgments handed down at all levels of the Family Court. This burgeoning usage may arise from my own deployment of the word in a judgment in Re G (Care Proceedings: Welfare Evaluation) [2013] EWCA Civ 965; [2014] 1 FLR 670 where, at paragraph 50, I described the judicial task in evaluating the welfare determination at the conclusion of public law children proceedings as requiring:

    i. ‘a global, holistic evaluation of each of the options available for the child’s future upbringing before deciding which of those options best meets the duty to afford paramount consideration to the child’s welfare.’

  2. Having heard argument in this and other cases, I apprehend that there is a danger that this adjective, and its purpose within my judgment in Re G, may become elevated into a free-standing term of art in a way which is entirely at odds with my original meaning.
  3. In the judgment in Re G my purpose in using the word ‘holistic’ was simply to adopt a single word designed to encapsulate what seasoned Family Lawyers would call ‘the old-fashioned welfare balancing exercise’, in which each and every relevant factor relating to a child’s welfare is weighed, one against the other, to determine which of a range of options best meets the requirement to afford paramount consideration to the welfare of the child. The overall balancing exercise is ‘holistic’ in that it requires the court to look at the factors relating to a child’s welfare as a whole; as opposed to a ‘linear’ approach which only considers individual components in isolation.
  4. Reference to ‘a global, holistic evaluation’ in Re G was absolutely not intended to introduce a new approach into the law. On the contrary, such an evaluation was put forward as the accepted conventional approach to conducting a welfare analysis, as opposed to a new and unacceptable approach of ‘linear’ evaluation which was seen to have been gaining ground.
  5. In the context that I have described, it is clear that a ‘global, holistic evaluation’ is no more than shorthand for the overall, comprehensive analysis of a child’s welfare seen as a whole, having regard in particular to the circumstances set out in the relevant welfare checklist [CA 1989, s 1(3) or Adoption and Children Act 2002, s 1(4)]. Such an analysis is required, by CA 1989, s 1(1) and/or ACA 2002, s 1(2) when a court determines any question with respect to a child’s upbringing. In some cases, for example where the issue is whether the location for a ‘handover’ under a Child Arrangements Order under CA 1989, s 8 is to take place at MacDonalds or Starbucks, the evaluation will be short and very straight forward. In other cases, for example a case of international relocation, the factors that must be given due consideration and appropriate weight on either side of the scales of the welfare balance may be such as to require an analysis of some sophistication and complexity. However, whatever the issue before the court, the task is the same; the court must weigh up all of the relevant factors, look at the case as a whole, and determine the course that best meets the need to afford paramount consideration to the child’s welfare. That is what, and that is all, that I intended to convey by the short phrase ‘global, holistic evaluation’.

 

 

 

Note also that whilst Ryder LJ emphasises and endorse the ‘balance sheet’ approach of the Court having a tabular document setting out the pros and cons of each option, McFarlane LJ deprecates that

Finally I wish to add one further observation relating to paragraph 29 of Ryder LJ’s judgment where my Lord suggests that it may be helpful for judges facing the task of analysing competing welfare issues to gain assistance by the use of a ‘balance sheet’. Whilst I entirely agree that some form of balance sheet may be of assistance to judges, its use should be no more than an aide memoire of the key factors and how they match up against each other. If a balance sheet is used it should be a route to judgment and not a substitution for the judgment itself. A key step in any welfare evaluation is the attribution of weight, or lack of it, to each of the relevant considerations; one danger that may arise from setting out all the relevant factors in tabular format, is that the attribution of weight may be lost, with all elements of the table having equal value as in a map without contours.

 

It will not amaze anyone to know that I am firmly with McFarlane LJ on this.  A balance sheet approach can easily distort a case  – you could produce a table that has 2 cons and 14 pros, but the cons could outweigh the pros because of the weight attached to those two things, whereas some of the pros could be fairly trivial in significance. A visual image of a table with 2 cons and 14 pros, however, is going to lead to an impression that the option is desireable and that the balance is firmly in its favour.

 

As the third Judge, Clarke LJ merely says this, in relation to the weighing up exercise

The court also needs to compare the rival proposals against each other since a proposal, or a feature of a proposal, which may seem inappropriate, looked at on its own, may take on a different complexion when weighed against the alternative; and vice versa.

 

the issue of whether Balance Sheets are, on balance, good or bad, remains a live issue to be resolved.

 

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Shoe-throwing and Interim Care Order

Posted on July 31, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

This is a tricky case.  It involves an appeal to the Court of Appeal about the Judge’s making of an Interim Care Order in relation to four children aged between 8 and 2 1/2

 

Re W-J (children) 2015

http://www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed146039

The mother in the case has what appears to be a form of personality disorder.  She accepts that there are times when she is utterly unable to control her temper and can fly into an unmanageable rage. Generally during these rages, she takes it out on inanimate objects.  She describes that the things that can set off these rages can be very trivial, giving the example of someone eating a packet of crisps loudly.

 

 

3…In short terms, from time to time she loses control of her behaviour, loses her temper, and the trigger for this is often a trivial matter which would not affect other people. On one occasion, for example, she describes losing her self control simply because she was irritated by the noise of someone eating a packet of crisps.

4. When she does lose control, she behaves in a physically violent way, normally towards inanimate objects, utensils in the kitchen, other matters of that sort. Sometimes she can detect the onset of these symptoms and make arrangements for the children, if they are at home, to go outside the house or go to be with someone else. On other occasions she is not able to have such foresight and it is plain from what the children have said that they have witnessed the distressing spectacle of their mother behaving in this way

 

Whilst that must be distressing and upsetting, what prompted the proceedings was that on two occasions, things went further than that.

 

what led to the proceedings being issued by the local authority were two instances relatively close together where the children reported on separate occasions being injured as a result of the mother’s behaviour. The first occurred on 2 February 2015, when the mother threw a shoe and it hit one of the older children. She accepted that and she indeed accepted a caution at the police station as a result of that behaviour. She accepted that she had thrown the shoe and thrown it at the child but she asserted that she was not deliberately intending to hurt him. She said she had lost control. The second occasion on 20 March 2015 was when the mother’s foot came into contact with the 7 year old girl. The judge heard some evidence about that. The mother accepted that, physically, her foot came into contact with her daughter but was not accepting that this was deliberately in order to cause injury. The child nevertheless was injured, albeit not very seriously. Following the second of those two outbursts, the local authority issued the proceedings.

 

What the Court had to do at that interim care order hearing was to determine whether the test for separation had been made out, and whether the risks could be managed in another way, applying the least interventionist principle.

 

Three of the children were found placements within the family, which were a decent compromise. That left one child, T, and a decision had to be taken about whether she could stay with mother, somewhere, or go into foster care.

There is a law geek point about whether the Court could have made an injunction under the Human Rights Act 1998 to make the LA manage the risk by keeping mother and child together.  The Court of Appeal closed this down by saying that it wasn’t sufficiently argued before the Judge to be an appeal point, so it is not resolved  (for my part, I think that the order that the Court can make in that regard is the straightforward Interim Supervision Order OR to compel them to place in residential assessment, a section 38(6) direction, and there’s no need to monkey around with esoteric HRA injunctions, but there may be a better case where the point really does arise)

 

10. In the course of the robust and constructive representation that the mother had at the hearing provided by Ms Kochnari, her counsel who represented her before the judge and before this court, Ms Kochnari drew attention to the jurisdiction that the Family Court may have in certain circumstances under the Human Rights Act 1996 to grant an injunction requiring a local authority to take a particular course of action. That jurisdiction in part is based upon, obviously, the wording of the Act itself but also decisions of this court, in particular Re: H (Children) [2011] EWCA Civ 1009 and a decision of the High Court: Re: DE (A child) [2014] EWFC 6. In short terms, Ms Kochnari’s submission was that the judge should grant an injunction requiring the local authority to keep the mother and child together, leaving it up to the local authority how that should be achieved.

11. That describes the position of the parties, mother and local authority, before the judge. The children’s guardian has plainly given this matter a great deal of anxious consideration. Both the guardian and the judge (and it is particularly important to stress that this was the judge’s perspective) saw the value for young T, particularly at the age she currently has reached, in remaining together with her mother. They have a good attachment and it would be seen as a detriment to that attachment, and a detriment to that important aspect of her best interests, for mother and child to be separated for any significant period at this juncture of her life.

12. But the question was how a maintenance of maternal care could be achieved. The guardian indicated that she would support a placement of the mother and child together in a foster home or some other form of residential accommodation if that could be achieved. The judge agreed with the guardian. The judge apparently said during the course of submissions that “heaven and earth” should be moved by the local authority to try to find a suitable placement and indeed an hour and a half or so was allowed during the course of the court day for the local authority to make enquiries. Those enquiries failed to identify any placement on the local authority’s books that could provide a mother and child placement at that stage. The local authority, however, took a more principled stand in addition to the practical difficulty of finding a particular placement. Their submission to the judge was that it was simply inappropriate to consider a mother and child foster home for this sort of case, this sort of case being one in which there is no real concern about the mother’s ability to provide day to day, hour to hour ordinary parenting, the concern being about her mental well being and the local authority indicated that it would be difficult to find a foster carer who would be prepared to accept the risk of having an adult, namely the mother, in the foster home when what is said about her behaviour is being said and is being said in the current period of time.

13. So the judge did not have an option before him for a mother and baby placement if he was to make an interim care order.

 

That left a rather stark choice

1. Grant the ICO and separate T from mother

2. Make no order / ISO and the child remains with mother at home

Or

3. Make no order, but adjourn for fuller enquiries about a placement that might have allowed a section 38(6) application for residential assessement to get off the ground.

 

The Court of Appeal set out why option 3, the adjournment, was not feasible

 

20. Dealing with the question of adjournment, the position before the judge is not altogether plain. It is clear that Ms Kochnari invited the judge in her closing submissions to afford more time for a more comprehensive search to be undertaken. She, in her submissions to us, urges us to interpret that as being really a request for the judge to consider adjourning the case for a period of a day or more to allow the sort of search that has now been undertaken to be conducted. The judge may have interpreted it simply as a matter of a further short time. For my part, given no doubt (although we have not got information about this) that that submission was made late during the course of the court day because this process will have taken up most of the court day, a request for more time almost inevitably meant more time when office hours are open and therefore another day, so in Ms Kochnari’s favour I assume that was the import of her submission to the judge.

21. But, in my judgment, the judge had to face up to the application before him and he did so without any consideration that another day or two could change the landscape and produce a firmed up and clear alternative for him to consider. He, with the reluctance that the choice of words that he used in his judgment clearly demonstrates, considered that it simply was not safe for this child to be at home with the mother for any period of time after the day on which he was giving judgment. In my view, he was entirely justified in coming to that view. I have referred to the psychiatric evidence, such as it was, that was available to him. He had evidence of the two recent episodes where the mother’s behaviour had flared up to the detriment of the children. A factor that I have not mentioned is that the older children had indicated a clear wish not to return to their mother’s care. He will have understood that for children, even if they were not physically injured by any particular deterioration in the mother’s behaviour, simply to watch their mother, the person upon whom they relied, behaving in this way, will have been totally bewildering and frightening. The judge did expressly take account of the fact that the older children had been able to be protected by the actions of the local authority because they had spoken up, they had gone to school or they had gone to other carers and said that their mother had behaved in the way that is now established she had behaved. But young T, aged two and a half would not be in a position to blow the whistle, as it were, on any such behaviour.

22. The final factor, and to my mind it is the crucial factor, is that it is impossible for an outsider to predict whether the mother will or will not flare up at any particular moment of any particular day. It is not a risk that can be predicted, contained or controlled, either by the mother or by any outside agency.

23. With all of those factors in mind, the judge was, in my view, entirely justified in saying that the risk was not one that could be taken in T’s best interests and immediate separation was required. So, even on the basis that a fully formed application for an adjournment had been made, in my view the judge’s decision not to adjourn but to make the order that day could not be said to be wrong and indeed on his analysis of the evidence it would seem hard to justify an alternative conclusion.

 

 

What could, perhaps, have been done but that wasn’t expressly considered here was for the Judge to make a short order – say a week, to allow that search for an alternative placement to take place and then revisit if there was any way to safely manage mother and child together.

 

The Court of Appeal, whilst acknowledging how difficult a situation this was and expressing hope that a longer term solution to mother’s difficulties might be found so that the other very good aspects of her parenting could prevail, were driven to conclude that the Judge’s decision to make an Interim Care Order was not only not wrong but actively right.

 

27. We are therefore left with the judge’s decision to make the interim care order in the circumstances that he did. This is a worrying case. I explained the basis of the worry at the very beginning of this short judgment. It is a case that will require very careful evaluation by the authorities and by the court over the course of the next 2 or 3 months as material is prepared for a final hearing. Crucial will be a full psychiatric assessment of the mother’s underlying mental health difficulties. At the end of the case, a judgment will have to be made as to the long term welfare of these children and as part of that judgment the many positives that can be said about this mother will come into play. But all that the judge was doing and, all that we are contemplating, is making a decision about the child’s welfare for the very short term under the interim order. In that context, important though the decision is, I regard the judge’s determination as being unremarkable. It was a decision made carefully by a judge on the correct legal test, supported by the evidence and one which amply was justified by the welfare of this young child. 

 

I’m sure that all of us would wish this mother well for the future and hope that a solution can be found that would let her parent in the way that she would wish to and be free of what must be a terrible inability to control those outbursts.

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Physical chastisement – Court of Appeal

Posted on July 31, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

A Local Authority appealed the decision of a Recorder at a finding of fact hearing, that having made some serious findings about physical injuries sustained by a child and caused by a parent, he went on to find that the threshold was not made out in terms of risk to that child’s sibling.   This case also deals with some important principles as to what extent making SOME findings has on the other allegations to be dealt with.

 

Re L-K 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2015/830.html

 

The Recorder had made these findings about the injuries

  1. The Recorder found that two sets of bruising had been inflicted by the parents, although he was unable to say which of them was responsible. They were as follows:

    i) There were parallel lines of bruising on R’s buttocks which the Recorder found were caused by someone striking him across the buttocks with a linear object (§20 of the Recorder’s first judgment). The Recorder thought it likely that the object used was a ruler or a belt, in which case there were at least two blows, but it may have been a stick or flexible cable, in which case there were at least four blows.

    ii) There were three bruises on the inner part of R’s right thigh, immediately below his buttocks, which were described as “loop pattern or crescent shaped injuries” and a further “sigma shaped pattern bruise” to the right of the lower buttock crease (§21). The Recorder found that these marks were caused by at least two deliberate slaps (§24).

  2. The Recorder found that both the instances of inflicted injury had the character of corporal punishment (§29). The parents had denied that they were responsible for the injuries but the Recorder found that they both knew who did it and had agreed to stick together and protect each other (§33), trying to mislead the social workers and lying in court. He said that it was “difficult to blame them in the circumstances” (§35) (referring, I think, to their lies and collusion, although he may have been referring to their treatment of R) as they were in a foreign country and had a difficult child to look after.
  3. It is not entirely clear how the Recorder viewed the corporal punishment inflicted on R. At §36, he said it “may well be regarded as going well beyond reasonable chastisement”. At §37, he said that he could envisage that if the parents had admitted it, they would have argued that it was no more than reasonable chastisement and said, “I cannot judge that question”. Later in the same paragraph, however, he went on to say that it certainly seemed excessive to him to hit a five year old at all, especially with an implement. What is clear is that he was unwilling to find it established that what happened to R was “abuse”. He seems to have taken into account in reaching this conclusion the possibility that it was “an over exercise of parental authority in a disciplinary capacity”, the evidence that the parents are loving parents and that R loves them and is not afraid of them, and the fact that he could not know how much R had suffered in the process (§37 of the main judgment and §5 of the Recorder’s supplemental judgment).
  4. The parents did admit one of the local authority’s allegations, that is that they had, each independently of the other, made R stand in a corner for more than two hours when he was naughty. The Recorder described the father’s conduct in so doing as “treating R cruelly” (§31). However, he accepted the parents’ evidence that this was something that happened when the family was under great stress and was not a regular occurrence (§34).

 

 

He then went on, however, to conclude that whilst the threshold was met for R, it was not met for R’s brother even in terms of risk of harm:-

 

 

14. He was accordingly asked to deal with the threshold thereafter, and did so, after further argument and consideration, in a short ex tempore judgment. In it, he found the threshold crossed in relation to R on the basis that R would have suffered significant harm because a) hitting a child of five who suffers from psychological problems with an implement will cause significant harm b) standing such a child in a corner for two to three hours must also cause significant harm and c) there must be a significant risk of repetition as the parents had closed ranks and said nothing about it to social services and the courts (supplementary judgment §5). As to M, in that judgment the Recorder stated baldly that he did not think the threshold was crossed.

  1. He returned to the threshold in relation to M in his judgment refusing permission to appeal and in his final short judgment. He determined that M was not at risk in his parents’ care, essentially on the basis that he was a very different child and had not suffered any harm so far. In the permission judgment, he referred to the findings he had made about R, and the evidence as to how very difficult R was to look after, contrasting that with M, in relation to whom there was neither evidence of psychological difficulty nor evidence of any problem with him in foster care. He said:

    “6. The difference between these two children is such that I cannot conceive that anybody could imagine that the findings I have made in respect of the older brother should lead to a finding that the younger brother is at risk.”

 

 

Well, the Recorder couldn’t concieve that anyone could imagine this, but the Court of Appeal not only imagined it, but did it.

 

36. The local authority argued that, in the light of the findings that R had been beaten with an implement and slapped sufficiently hard to leave bruising and had been excessively punished by being made to stand in a corner for a prolonged period, it was wrong to conclude that there was no risk of significant harm to M. What those facts indicated, in their submission, was that at times of stress or challenging behaviour from one of the children, the parents may harm their child whether by way of discipline or simple loss of control. They argued that the Recorder placed too great a weight on the difference between the two boys as a protective factor for M and failed also to take account of the fact that M is more vulnerable because of his young age and may also become more challenging as he grows older.

  1. I would accept this submission. Rightly or wrongly, the Recorder did not make any findings on the issue of whether M was present during the punishments of R and whether he was emotionally harmed by what he saw and there was no evidence that M himself suffered any physical harm. The threshold in relation to M therefore depended on whether he was “likely to suffer significant harm”. “Likely to suffer” in this context means that there is “a real possibility, a possibility that cannot sensibly be ignored having regard to the gravity of the feared harm in the particular case”, see Re H and R (Minors)(Child Sexual Abuse: Standard of Proof) [1996] 1 FLR 80. The threshold is therefore “comparatively low”. It was, in my view, plainly satisfied on the facts that the Recorder had found. Every case depends upon its own facts, but in this particular case it was not at the threshold stage but at the welfare stage that matters such as the parents’ circumstances at the time R was injured and the differing personalities of the children were relevant. Given the nature of the Recorder’s findings in respect of R, and the parents’ failure to acknowledge or explain what had happened and why, I do not think that the factors that the Recorder relied upon in differentiating between the two boys in fact provided any reassurance in relation to the risk to M for threshold purposes. I would therefore substitute for the Recorder’s dismissal of the proceedings in relation to M, a finding that the threshold criteria were satisfied in his case on the basis of likely harm.

 

 

The next limb of the appeal was that, having made those findings, was the Judge wrong in discounting the other injuries to R that he made no findings on?  I.e in relation to say ten physical injuries should the Judge approach each and every one in isolation, OR if the Judge had made findings in relation to four or five or them, does the fact of those findings become a relevant consideration when approaching the remainder?

 

  1. The local authority argued that the Recorder was wrong to decline to make findings in relation to the injuries to R’s face, neck/chest, and thigh, and a finding that he was “abused”. They submitted that he had gone wrong because he failed to look at the totality of the picture, instead considering the injuries only individually. It was argued that the findings that he did make, whilst not probative of the other injuries, were capable of being corroborative and supportive evidence in respect of them. Also relevant to the overall evaluation, it was submitted, was the parents’ dishonesty.
  2. I agree with these submissions. It is always necessary for a judge who is considering possible non-accidental injuries to look at the whole picture before determining causation. So, for example, what might be accepted as an accidental injury if it stood alone, might take on a wholly different aspect if it is only one of a number of injuries. Similarly, the fact that it is firmly established that one of a number of injuries has been inflicted by a parent must be taken into account when evaluating the cause of other injuries.
  3. In this case, I have no doubt that when it came to considering the possible causes of the other marks found on R, attention had to be paid to the fact that the parents had a) beaten R with an implement causing bruising, b) smacked him to the extent that bruising was caused, and c) lied in an attempt to conceal what they had done. Regard should also have been had to the excessive punishment which the parents conceded had been imposed on R in the form of having to stand in a corner for a prolonged period. As the local authority acknowledged, the fact that one injury is inflicted does not prove that others are non-accidental, but it changes the context in which the child came by the other injuries from a home which may be beyond reproach to one in which it is known that there has been, at the least, excessive physical punishment. As Mr Roche for the father observed during submissions, it was also the case that R had injuries which were accepted to be accidental. That fact was relevant too, but it did not remove the potential significance of the findings of non-accidental injury. The fact that the parents had lied about what they had done was also relevant to their credibility in relation to other matters. The Recorder’s approach did not pay proper regard to these factors as part of the overall picture he was surveying.

 

Whilst the Judge did not have to slavishly follow the medical opinions  (see dozens of Court of Appeal decisions that confirm that), the Judge does have to pay proper attention to them, and where a theory for the explanation of the injury emerges from the Judge himself, it is necessary for the Judge to explore that theory with the expert.

 

  1. In my view, the Recorder also failed to pay proper attention to the evidence of Dr Fonfé in determining what had happened. It was, of course, for him to decide, on the basis of all of the evidence, whether it was established that particular injuries were non-accidental, and not for Dr Fonfé. However, he needed to take her expert views into account in his determination. In referring to what she said about each of the injuries as her “suspicion”, he seems to me to have understated the force of her opinion. He also failed to take account of her more general advice as to causation, perhaps because he concentrated on the injuries individually. As can be seen from the passages from her reports which I have quoted above, Dr Fonfé’s approach was entirely conventional in that she looked at R’s situation overall as well as considering the various injuries individually. The Recorder was not bound to accept her general observations but he did, at least, need to show that he had considered them. Had he done so, he may have structured his judgment differently and avoided falling into error. As it was, he appears to have made his determination about each of the individual injuries before, at §26 (see above), turning to look at the picture collectively, and when he did look at the whole canvas at this point, it was not with a view to considering what the overall picture might tell him about the individual injuries, but in order to address the local authority’s allegation that R had been subjected to a prolonged single attack or a series of individual episodes of attack.
  2. In short, the Recorder was wrong to conclude that there was nothing but Dr Fonfe’s suspicions in relation to the other injuries. His own positive findings and Dr Fonfé’s expert evidence about what, in her view, the overall picture revealed were important too. It is not a foregone conclusion that they would have led to a different conclusion as to the other injuries but they needed to be put into the equation and considered with the rest of the evidence.
  3. In my judgment, this deficiency in the Recorder’s approach is sufficient to render his decision in relation to the balance of the local authority’s allegations unsafe. It would follow that, in so far as it is necessary in order to make decisions about the children’s futures for there to be findings in relation to those allegations, there would have to be a further hearing for that purpose. I need not therefore say much more about the other flaws that there may have been in the Recorder’s approach. I would, however, mention a number of matters.
  4. The first is the Recorder’s crayon explanation (see §16 of the judgment). It seems that this came entirely from him. Dr Fonfé’s view as to the feasibility of the hypothesis was not sought. If a particular explanation such as this is to carry weight in the court’s decision, it is important, in my view, for it to be offered for comment by the relevant expert and in submissions. Had that been done, the response may well have been that the crayon explanation ignored the existence of what Dr Fonfé saw as a pair of marks which looked like grip marks.
  5. I wonder also whether this passage in the Recorder’s judgment indicates that he was veering towards requiring that all other possible causes must be excluded before a finding of non-accidental injury could be made (see also §14, for example) and/or proceeding on the basis that no finding could be made without corroboration. Depending on the particular facts of the case, it may not be necessary for the evidence to go that far. What is required is simply that it should be established on the balance of probability that the injury was non-accidental.
  6. As to the Recorder’s conclusion that the findings he had made were not established to be abuse, I am not inclined to spend time on that issue for two reasons. First, there is little point in debating whether what the Recorder found to have been established should or should not be classed as “abuse” when his findings may not be the last word on what happened to R. Secondly, what actually happened is much more important than how it is classified and it may well be that evidence which is relevant to this may continue to emerge, for example from Poland, from the parents themselves in response to the findings made so far, and in the course of any further fact finding hearing in relation to the balance of the allegations.

 

 

The appeal was therefore successful

 

 

For the reasons I have already given, I would allow this appeal. In relation to the threshold in respect of to M, I would substitute a finding that it is satisfied on the basis of likelihood of harm. As far as the Recorder’s findings of fact are concerned, I would not interfere with the facts which he found proved but I would set aside his determination in relation to the balance of the local authority’s allegations and remit the case to the Family Court for an urgent directions hearing at which the future conduct of it will be decided.

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“Just glanced?” Court of Appeal find Judge to have been unfair

Posted on July 29, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

Re G (child) 2015  http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2015/834.html was an appeal from a finding of fact hearing in private law proceedings conducted   (perhaps that ought to be in inverted commas) by Her Honour Judge Pearl.

 

The appeal was on the basis of judicial bias/ unfairness, which as I’ve set out before has a relatively low bar in law  (that a reasonable observer would have concluded that the Judge was biased) but in practice is hard to pursuade an Appeal Court of, since most people who leave Court without the order they wanted tend to think that a Judge was biased.

 

Here the case was made out, in spades.   [Though not necessarily in terms of the Judge being in favour of one party and against the other, but rather that her treatment of mother’s case was sufficiently unfair to prejudice a fair hearing]

Things began badly when Ms Toch, the mother’s counsel, arrived late at Court on the first day. The context of this was that exceptional weather conditions had disrupted all transport on that day. Ms Toch apologised, but the Judge seemed to take it as a personal slight and had not been able to move on.

 

  1. The first specific complaint was that the judge impolitely told counsel off for her late arrival at court on the first day of the fact finding hearing, 28 October 2013. It was submitted that Ms Toch had been subjected to unwarranted and unfair criticism about this and that this was of concern to the mother as it was obvious to her that the judge was annoyed with her counsel. Other specific instances were identified where it was said that the judge’s attitude towards Ms Toch was disparaging and bore the mark of hostility or unfairness. One example was in relation to the way in which the judge dealt with Ms Toch over the CAFCASS officer but attention was invited to the way in which the judge dealt with Ms Toch over other matters as well.
  2. It is essential to consider the exchanges that preceded the commencement of the evidence in the case as a whole. The hearing got off to a difficult start on the morning of Monday, 28 October. There had been a powerful storm the previous night with damaging winds. Transport services were severely disrupted and Ms Toch had problems in getting into central London for the hearing. Ms Toch’s account in her statement is that, on the witness template, the morning had been scheduled for the judge to read. It has not been possible to find out whether that was anyone else’s understanding. Ms Toch’s account is that she was told by her clerks on the Monday morning that the judge wished to sit at 11.45 a.m.. Because of her travel difficulties, Ms Toch did not arrive until 12.20 p.m. which made her late for this and meant that she had not been able to discuss matters directly with counsel for the father before the case started. The transcript of the proceedings opens at C3 with Ms Toch apologising to the judge for delaying the court. She explained about the limitations on transport from her home area that morning and the steps she had had to take to get to court.
  3. Matters moved on but it can be seen from the transcript that Ms Toch’s lateness continued to trouble the judge for some time and that she returned to it later. I will deal with this at its appropriate place in my consideration of this stage of the hearing.

 

 

The Court of Appeal are not kidding.  To get a flavour of it, see this exchange

 

It is not difficult to accept that the mother’s confidence in her counsel’s ability to put forward her case to the judge would have been undermined by the judge’s approach to Ms Toch as set out above. It is also, perhaps, of note (although it cannot affect the fairness of the fact finding hearing) that matters were not easy at the hearing on 7 January 2014 either. By way of example, Ms Toch said to the judge, in relation to the mother’s evidence about the dowry question, “Your honour subsequently looked at these matters and made a finding.”. The judge responded:

“THE JUDGE: Looked at them?

MS TOCH: Your honour has….Yes.

THE JUDGE: Just glanced?

MS TOCH: No, your honour.

THE JUDGE: I have analysed them. I have spent hours on this case…..I have gone through every line of the evidence. I have not just looked at it, Ms Toch. I take that as a straight insult.”

 

 

Oh boy. And again

 

 

“THE JUDGE: Do you think it is fair that a CAFCASS officer should stop contact completely without even speaking to the father about a matter of fact? Do you think that is the way to proceed?

MS TOCH: Well, of course, he did not. He raised this. He referred the matter to Social Services to investigate and the matter was referred to the court and the court stopped contact. It was not the CAFCASS officer.

THE JUDGE: But he recommended that contact be supervised.

MS TOCH: He wrote a letter to the court to say that contact should be suspended pending the outcome.

THE JUDGE: Do you think that is a fair way to proceed?

MS TOCH: Well, it was referred to the court, so it is a matter for the court.

THE JUDGE: Do you think –

MS TOCH: It is a matter for the court.

THE JUDGE: We are not going to get –

MS TOCH: I am sorry.

THE JUDGE: This is the second time we have had a conversation like this.

MS TOCH: Yes.

THE JUDGE: If I ask a question, try and answer it please.

MS TOCH: The CAFCASS officer did not suspend contact and contact was ordered to be supervised by HHJ Everall –

THE JUDGE: Do you think it is right –

MS TOCH: – on submissions.

THE JUDGE: Do you think this man’s evidence on a finding of fact is going to assist me?

MS TOCH: I am not saying it will.

THE JUDGE: Yes or no?

MS TOCH: I am not asking for him. I am saying he is available. I understood the father wished to have him.

THE JUDGE: Well, you have just asked the question [of the father’s counsel]. He said he does not want him to be cross-examined.

MS TOCH: And I have heard that, so unless the court wishes him, I do not.

THE JUDGE: Look –

MS TOCH: I am not calling him. Am I clear?

THE JUDGE: No, I know.

MS TOCH: I am not calling him.

THE JUDGE: Let us try and have an exchange, shall we?

MS TOCH: Yes.

THE JUDGE: All right. You have made me angry.

MS TOCH: I am sorry.

THE JUDGE: The second time. This morning I was asking questions. You simply were not answering the questions.

MS TOCH: I am sorry.

THE JUDGE: You must answer my questions.

MS TOCH: I will, yes.

THE JUDGE: Are you going to ask me to rely on this CAFCASS officer’s finding or understanding of the truth as part of the evidence I rely upon to substantiate your client’s allegation of the stabbing? Yes or no?

MS TOCH: No.

THE JUDGE: Thank you.

MS TOCH: I am terribly sorry. I did not mean to be –

THE JUDGE: I am so grateful to you.

MS TOCH: Yes.

THE JUDGE: No, you do mean to be because this is the second time you have done it and it does not work with me. You are not relying on his assessment of this child’s veracity. You are only relying on the fact that it was said. The father does not deny it was said and you are not going to come towards me at the end of the hearing and say, ‘Because the CAFCASS believed it, your honour, you must believe it.’

MS TOCH: No.

THE JUDGE: All right. Do you think it was bad judgment for him to recommend that contact be suspended?

MS TOCH: He –

THE JUDGE: Yes or no?

MS TOCH: It was correct judgment to have the matter investigated as it was.

THE JUDGE: This is going to be a difficult hearing.

MS TOCH: I am sorry. I do not think my opinion is important, with respect. He made the recommendation. It came before the court.

THE JUDGE: Look, I do not want to stop a witness coming to court and then meet submissions from you –

MS TOCH: I am not going to make those submissions, if I make that plain.

THE JUDGE: Yes, good.

MS TOCH: Yes.

THE JUDGE: So that has taken ten minutes. No counsel this morning at all and ten minutes and I am not being unreasonable about this.”

 

[Erm, I think perhaps you were]

I feel Ms Toch’s pain there. I’ve had, some considerable years ago, that sort of experience, though only about a quarter as bad as that. If I say to practitioners “Humpty Dumpty” some may have a shudder of recognition and repressed memories flood back. There is very little worse than being in front of a Judge and feeling that every single word you say is just making the Judge more cross.

If you are remembering the Liverpool Judge and the Court of Appeal ruling that a judicial appointment was not a licence to be rude, you are on the right lines here.

 

As the Court of Appeal say, one does not pick up tone of voice from a transcript of judgment.

What is not apparent from the transcript is the judge’s tone of voice. I need only say that listening to the recording did nothing to improve the impression gained from the written word.

 

There are many, many, more examples of this from the trial. Immediately after this, the Judge castigates Ms Toch for being late again.

The pressure on Ms Toch continued immediately after the passage that I have set out above with the judge returning to the subject of Ms Toch’s lateness as follows (C25):

“THE JUDGE: Everybody knew – let me be clear about this – there were going to be no trains this morning. It was very, very clear on the national media. Everybody knew. It was absolutely clear and I changed my travel plans accordingly, as did everybody else. Everybody knew and if I had been living in [counsel’s home town in Kent], I would have made plans to avoid this disaster this morning. Be utterly clear about that.

MS TOCH: Yes. I can only apologise to the court. I did try. I really did try.

THE JUDGE: Well, I hope you have apologised to your client.

MS TOCH: I apologise to everybody in this court that has been inconvenienced.

THE JUDGE: Everybody knew that there were going to be no trains this morning.

MS TOCH: Yes.

THE JUDGE: So why you sat in [counsel’s home town] last night waiting for there to be no trains, I do not know. It is ten to three and we have not even started –

MS TOCH: I am so sorry but sometimes people cannot leave the night before and I could not. ….”

 

How is the mother supposed to feel about whether she is getting a fair trial at this point? The Judge is outright quarrelling / bullying her representative at this stage.

  1. It was unnecessary, in my view, for the judge to have returned to this question at this stage in the proceedings and, as I see it, the exchange compounded the pressure that had been put on Ms Toch by what had just occurred in relation to the CAFCASS officer. My experience is that counsel tend to manage to be on time for court against even formidable odds but sometimes it simply is not possible. The weather conditions on this weekend in October were extraordinary and disruptive of transport. As Ms Toch observed to the judge, sometimes it is not possible for counsel to set off the night before. There are various reasons for this, ranging from domestic commitments to an inability to obtain accommodation overnight or to pay for it from a brief fee which was not designed for that eventuality. Ms Toch told the judge of the steps that she had taken to get round the problems on the morning of the hearing, she got herself to court as soon as she could, and she apologised. It is understandable that the judge felt frustrated by the loss of time that could otherwise have been devoted to discussions between counsel or other arrangements outside court or to getting the hearing underway. It is clear that it was going to be a challenge to conclude the evidence and submissions within the allotted court time, even without delays of the kind that had occurred and that always poses difficulties for a judge. However, I accept the submission of Mr Phillips that she laboured the issue of Ms Toch’s lateness to the point of unwarranted, unfair criticism.
  2. Taking the whole of the exchange about the CAFCASS officer and the lateness together, I also accept the submission that the mother would have felt that the judge was annoyed with her counsel and that this annoyance influenced the judge’s approach to her case and impeded the presentation of it by counsel on her behalf.

 

The Court of Appeal did determine that the Judge’s management of mother’s cross-examination did not cross the line and that a Judge is entitled to have their own approach to such matters providing that the line is not crossed

 

  1. It was shortly after the CAFCASS/lateness exchange that the mother began to give evidence. Complaint was made of the judge’s approach to her during her cross-examination which it was argued was hostile and distressing to the mother. Managing a trial can be a challenging, even for an experienced judge, and it is sometimes necessary to react without much time for refined consideration. Generous allowance always has to be made for this and also for the fact that, even with counsel’s help, it is very difficult to tell from a transcript, or even from listening to a recording, precisely what was going on at all stages during the hearing. Furthermore, different judges have different styles and counsel and litigants can usually be expected to cope with the talkative, the uncommunicative, the robust, and even the irritated judge, provided the judge’s behaviour does not stray outside acceptable limits.
  2. In this case, I see the judge’s handling of the mother’s cross-examination as being within normal tolerances. True it is that the judge asked the mother on occasions to stop interrupting her, but that was not unjustified as the mother did tend to interrupt questions put to her and talk over people. Nor, in my view, would it be right to criticise the judge for speaking to the witness about being on oath or for requiring her to stand up, which was likely to have been done in an effort to control the process and possibly also in order to hear better. I note also that when the mother was upset following some questioning by Mr Cameron (C104/5), the judge asked if she had hankies and offered her a short break.

 

However, the judicial approach to Ms Toch’s cross-examination of father did cross that line on occasions.

 

Mr Phillips’ summary in his Schedule of the position with regard to the second day of Ms Toch’s cross-examination was that between C221 and C279 (which was essentially the end of it), it was difficult to find a single page where there had not been interventions by the judge. The fairness of a hearing cannot be assessed scientifically or mathematically but, seeking for some way in which to look at matters as a whole and to pin down impressions, I counted the entries against the names of the judge, Ms Toch and the witness in the first thirty or so pages of transcript of the resumed cross-examination, starting at the foot of C216 which was the nominal start of it. By the middle of C247, the judge had spoken 250 times, Ms Toch had spoken 227 times and the witness had spoken 140 times, only 64 of them in response to a question from Ms Toch. Between C251 and C258, there was quite a concentrated period of cross-examination, during which the judge spoke only 18 times. However, it was then a further nineteen pages before Ms Toch was able to cross-examine continuously again, although during those nineteen pages there was considerable questioning of the father by the judge, for example for three full pages between C259 and C261. Ms Toch resumed continuous questioning at the foot of C277 but at the foot of C279 Mr Cameron intervened to remind the court that a witness was waiting outside court and that was effectively the end of the cross-examination.

 

….

 

  1. By C194, Ms Toch’s cross-examination had turned to the issue of who was the primary carer for G and, shortly thereafter, also incorporated questioning going to the father’s allegations about the mother drinking, about which he was seeking a finding of fact. The judge’s second prolonged intervention came in the course of this at C197 when she said to Ms Toch, “Are you going to ask him about these serious allegations that are being made?” and slightly later, “I am just wondering when we are going to start on the case that your client is making.” The judge then explored with counsel for some time, in the presence of the witness, what the underlying material was to support the mother’s case about gambling and domestic violence, wondering aloud to counsel “whether we are using the time efficiently” (C201). This passage ended with the father putting up his hand to contribute to the discussion and doing so at the foot of C201.
  2. When Ms Toch resumed her cross-examination of the father the following day (C216), it is apparent that she was intending to deal with the question of domestic violence. I have already referred to the number of contributions made by the judge, Ms Toch and the father respectively during this period but I now return to look more closely at the nature of some of these, albeit that I will not go through every matter of complaint. It is perhaps relevant that the day began with the judge criticising both counsel over Mr Cameron having spoken to his client whilst he was in the course of giving his evidence. The criticism was first directed to Mr Cameron, whom the judge said she felt like reporting, but then widened to include Ms Toch as well because she was thought to have agreed to what Mr Cameron had done. The judge said that she would decide in due course what action she was going to take about this (C215).

 

By this point, the Judge was giving it both barrels to both counsel.  Could it be argued that if a Judge is hostile to both parties, that any judicial bias evens itself out? Nice try…

 

  1. As I have said, the fairness of a hearing cannot be assessed mathematically or scientifically. Nor is it dependent on a comparison between the way in which the judge has treated the two sides. If one party has been treated in such a way as to disable him or her from advancing his or her case properly, the hearing is not rendered fair by the fact that the other party has been treated equally unfairly. For what it is worth, however, a comparison of the quantum of intervention by the judge on the second day of each counsel’s cross-examination of the other party shows, I think, that Mr Cameron was rather less hampered than Ms Toch.
  2. It is necessary to look not only at the quantum of the judge’s interventions but also at their nature. As Mr Turner submitted on behalf of the father, a litigant does not have an unrestricted right to present a case in such a way as he or she or his or her lawyers may choose. A judge sometimes has no choice but to intervene during the evidence because of the nature of the questioning or in order to manage the use of court time (as the father would submit was necessary here). Furthermore, the interventions can sometimes be a help to counsel in his or her questioning rather than a hindrance

 

And so the appeal on unfairness was comfortably made out.

The Court of Appeal did try to soften the blow

 

  1. Before I come to what I would see as the consequences of my conclusions, there are a number of things that need to be said. The first is that I am very much aware of the pressures that there are on the family justice system and upon the hard-pressed and very hard-working judges in the Family Court who must ensure that the court’s limited time is used to the best possible effect. This inevitably means that family judges have to manage hearings before them robustly and this requires intervention at times. The hand of fate, in this case in the form of the disruption caused by the storm, can sometimes make the judge’s task almost impossible. The second is that I am deeply conscious of the fact that the one person from whom this court has not heard is the judge, who would no doubt have had much that she could valuably have contributed to the evaluation of the process. I have done my best to make allowances for this and I have thought long and hard about which side of the line of fairness the hearing in this case fell. The third is that the case is not about Ms Toch and whether she was treated fairly, although she has been mentioned frequently in this judgment. It is about whether the mother was given a fair chance to put her case and Ms Toch was simply one means by which she sought to do so, hence the need to look at the exchanges between the judge and Ms Toch.
  2. In my view, it would be a necessary result of my conclusions that the findings of fact made by the judge would have to be set aside. I would return the matter to the Family Court for there to be a directions hearing, in front of a judge other than Judge Pearl, to examine whether it is now necessary for new findings of fact to be made. It may not be, because the situation for this family has moved on considerably since the events with which we have been concerned. For this same reason, it is not necessary for me to go into the points taken against the orders made by Judge Pearl other than her findings of fact. They have all been overtaken by later orders or other developments.
  3. I would therefore allow the appeal to the extent that Judge Pearl’s findings of fact are set aside and the matter is remitted to the Family Court for further directions.

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Genuinely shocking

Posted on July 20, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

The Court of Appeal in Re A-S (children) 2015 had to deal with an appeal, the facts of which were genuinely shocking to me. And that is as a lawyer who has been dealing with Children Act 1989 cases for over twenty years now.

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2015/748.html

 

Within care proceedings, a range of findings were made against the mother, the most serious of which was that she had deliberately drowned her baby (who survived and is fine now). The mother’s case, including her case on appeal, was that she had been negligent in leaving her child unattended in the bath, where he became submerged, but that it was an accident.

 

You may be thinking that it must be very difficult to establish to the requisite standard of proof whether the incident of drowning was deliberate or accidental. The shocking thing about this case is not merely the incident itself, but that the whole thing was recorded by way of a 999 call.

 

The call lasted for around 15 minutes.  The mother telephoned 999 to say that there had been an accident, that her baby had been left unattended in a bath and had slipped under the water.  However, that 999 call is recorded, and the medical experts (and indeed the Judges) who listened to it had three major concerns :-

 

1. That up until around the nine minute mark, the baby can be heard making normal baby noises that would not be consistent with a child who had nearly drowned.

2. That at around the nine minute mark, the mother stops speaking although the paramedics can be heard trying to talk to her and engage with her. And the sound of running water is heard.

3. That after that period, a scream is heard from the mother, and thereafter, the noises made by the baby are consistent with a child having been immersed under water –  the baby is heard again grunting and coughing then in further respiratory distress and suddenly stops breathing at 10 minutes 48 seconds  – and he was in this position until the paramedic arrived and resuscitated him at around the 15 minute mark.

 

There was also evidence from several medical professionals that it was just not possible that a child would have nearly drowned, showed no ill effects for nine minutes, then stopped breathing and required resuscitation by a paramedic. The sequence of events is just wrong.

“Diana Howlett … is a consultant paediatrician of 20 years. She and two of her colleagues of similar experience, Dr Goldsworthy and Dr Linton, who had been asked to listen to the recording of the call. Her report is at G87. Putting its contents very simply all the three doctors say there is a disparity in their view between the history given by the mother (the child had been found drowned a few minutes prior to the phone call) and the “auditory history” of the child on the call, ie the crying and other sounds L was making in the first 10 minutes of the call and his presentation when medical help arrived at the house. They concluded that they can hear the sound of running water after 10 minutes and the explanation is that it is at this point the child is being drowned. In their written submissions Mr Ekaney QC and Miss Evans ask me to treat this evidence very carefully. The doctor said in cross-examination “we were asked to give an opinion but none of us would consider ourselves experts in this area. It raises more questions really”. I do not intend to put any significant weight on this evidence. They heard what they heard, the baby appeared to be crying while mother was shouting things like “don’t die”, “stand up”, and in particular “wake up, wake up” when from the noise he was making he appeared to be awake. I have to say I heard that too.”

 

  1. I turn to the report of Dr D S James of the Wales Institute of Forensic Medicine at Cardiff University. It was accurately and sufficiently summarised by Judge Marston in his judgment as follows:

    “He says if you ignore the content of the 999 call M’s description of immersion, apparent respiratory arrest, gradual recovery after rescue breaths and presentation to paramedics after 10-15 minutes wet, cold and in respiratory distress but responding well to oxygen with an eventual good recovery is in keeping with the pathology of near drowning. If the child was not in respiratory distress and apparently vocalising normally for an infant of his age ie “well”, the description of a very unwell infant, cold, quiet and collapsed raises the question why there has been a significant and sudden deterioration in his condition. In his report the doctor puts two possibilities, either it is a complication of the immersion or “there has been a further episode of immersion causing L to collapse”. In his conclusions he says the baby would not usually be normal for 10 minutes prior to a sudden deterioration but the consequences of near drowning are complex and variable and there are pathophysiological mechanisms which merit consideration by paediatric clinicians.”

  2. Finally, I go to the report of Dr Stephen Playfor, Consultant Paediatric Intensivist in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. Dr Playfor’s report contains a very careful and detailed analysis of what can be heard on the recording of the 999 call. He constructed what he called “a robust timeline of events”. His opinion, on the balance of probability, was that L was drowned during the interval of 49 seconds between 21.43:28 and 21.44:17. (Since the recording started at 21.34:48, this corresponds with the interval between 8 minutes 40 seconds and 9 minutes 29 seconds.) He opined that the likelihood of the respiratory distress which can be heard subsequently on the recording occurring as a physiological response to an episode of drowning before the making of the 999 call is “very small (<5% chance).” He said:

    “A single episode of drowning occurring before the recorded 999 call … is not compatible with the sounds contained within that recording.”

    He added:

    “L can be heard to vocalise and cry normally during the first 8 minutes and 40 seconds of the recorded 999 call without any sign of respiratory distress. During this period I am confident that he was conscious, ‘near normal’ and not in any need of resuscitation.”

 

 

The conclusion that the Judge was inexorably drawn to was that the mother had made a 999 call when there was nothing wrong with the child, but during the course of the call had done deliberately to the child what she was claiming had happened accidentally.

 

About the only argument that mother could deploy is that this seems unbelievably improbable, and so she deployed it.

“I now turn to consider the final part of [the] jigsaw, M’s evidence. She deploys a number of powerful points before she even gets into the witness box. First there is the inherently unlikely nature of the allegation that a mother would drown her own child. Her father, for example, thought such a possibility here as absurd. That does not of course change the standard of proof but it is something I must have strongly in mind when considering the case. Next there is something called the wider canvass. Here I am dealing with the loving, kind mother who it is said was without external stressors and who gave a consistent account throughout.”

 

 

It was, of course, a very significant finding for the Judge to make, particularly in a case where there’s nothing in the background features of the case that would cast any light on why the mother would do something as peculiar and harmful as this.

The judge’s conclusion is in a passage which I must set out in full:

“The medical evidence all points in the same direction. The baby was normal until about 8/9 minutes into the 999 call. There is no reason related to an earlier drowning incident that would cause the post 10 minutes in collapse. The Mother’s evidence of what happened is not substantiated by any external matters eg a pan of burned food or a full baby bath, there is some evidence of what might be brown flecks of faeces in the bath but no other bit of the Mother’s story is supported The Mother’s evidence is shot through with so many lies and so much vagueness that I am forced to conclude she is trying to hide something. The only thing that she can possibly be attempting to hide is that there was no incident of drowning in the bath and that she is responsible for attempting to drown the child after 8 minutes and 40 seconds of the phone call for about 47 seconds. Most likely this was under the tap in the conservatory. I cannot speculate on why she made the call in the first place or why she did what she did. It seems to me that at the point where she seeks reassurance from Mr Mahony that the baby will be alright and he says the child is seriously ill she becomes hysterical because she realises what she has done. It may be that she did not intend to kill the baby. Until the mother tells the truth we are left with speculation.

I find [the] allegation proved on the balance of probabilities.”

The Judge added a clarification about the mother’s motivation for making the 999 call

“With regard to the 999 call I have to conclude that the 999 call was instigated for a reason I can only speculate about, and I do not think it is appropriate for me to speculate. My finding is that at the start of that call the child had not been subject to an incident of drowning. I made that finding specifically on all of the evidence that I heard; the medical evidence; the evidence from all of the parties who gave evidence; and the witnesses that were called. I do not know why the mother was distressed during the first part of the call. She was certainly at the time of the arrival of the paramedic in a calm condition, and became distressed – in fact hysterical according to the paramedic – after she was told, as I pointed out in my judgment, the condition of her baby was very serious. I rely on the totality of the evidence about the 999 call. I gave only marginal weight to the three paediatricians who were not jointly instructed experts and who, one of whom in Mr Kenny’s cross-examination, conceded that they were only again marginally connected with the case. I obviously give a great deal more weight to the jointly instructed experts, and I have listened to the call myself and read the transcript.”

This is one of the sad truths about Court hearings – sometimes even after every scrap of paper is obtained and every witness is scoured in cross-examination, the Court doesn’t get to the Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth.  We will never know what made the mother do what she did here, and speculation was quite rightly put out of the picture by the Judge.

The appeal was on the basis largely that the Judge had gone too far in making a finding that the mother had deliberately injured the baby by drowing it, after making a 999 call.

The problem that mother’s team had to overcome was that the 999 recording was not only compelling evidence for the medical experts, but that it was striking and easy to follow for anyone listening to it, including the Court of Appeal Judges.

  1. This appeal comes before us in forensically unusual circumstances. As I have already remarked, at the heart of the appeal is the question of what it is that can be heard on the recording of the 999 call; crucially, what exactly it is that can be heard of L. Each of us has listened to the recording. I have listened to the recording more than once. We are therefore in almost as good a position as the judge to come to a conclusion.
  2. The experts described what they had heard on the tape during the first nine minutes or so of the recording. It is apparent from his judgment and his subsequent clarification that their descriptions accorded with what Judge Marston heard. It accords with what I heard when I listened to the recording.
  3. Two points emerge:

    i) First, during the first nine minutes or so of the recording one hears what Dr Howlett and her colleagues described in their report as “Normal baby vocalisations”including “polysyllabic babble and normal multi-tonal crying.” Equally important is what one does not hear: coughing, grunting, wheezing or other sounds of respiratory distress.ii) Secondly, the layman’s impression is confirmed by expert opinion: what can be heard is not compatible – the words used both by Dr Howlett and her colleagues and by Dr Playfor – with a previous drowning.

    Put very simply, a baby who presented as L did to Mr Mahoney when he arrived, would not have been vocalising, indeed would not have been capable of vocalising, as L was during the first nine minutes or so of the recording, if he had drowned before the 999 call was made.

  4. It was this which drove Judge Marston to his conclusion as to the timing of L’s drowning. That was plainly a conclusion properly open to him. Indeed, I would without hesitation have reached the same conclusion. L was not drowned before the 999 was made; he was drowned some nine minutes or so after the recording began.
  5. That being so, the only remaining question is whether this drowning was itself accidental or, as the judge found, deliberate. Judge Marston inferred that it was deliberate. In my judgment hewas entitled to come to that conclusion. Mr Ekaney submits that the judge was here in the realm of mere speculation. I do not, with respect, agree. Two factors point compellingly in this direction. First, it follows from the ascertainment of the true timing of the drowning, that the mother’s 999 call was false. L had not at that time “fallen in the water”. There had been no negligence on the mother’s part. What an astonishing coincidence that, some ten minutes later, L should actually have suffered an accidental drowning, that precisely what the mother had fabricated should so soon become reality. Secondly, if this drowning was in truth accidental, then why on earth did the mother not say so? Why should she persist in her lies? It would of course expose her to the charge that she had made a false 999 call, and wasted the time of the emergency services, but surely better that than being found to havedeliberately drowned her own baby.
  6. Where Judge Marston did, correctly, say that he would be entering into the realm of speculation was in relation to two matters: first, the mother’s reasons for making the false 999 call and then deliberately drowning L; and, secondly, as to the mechanism she adopted. The fact that, in relation to these crucial matters, he could only speculate no doubt gave Judge Marston pause for thought, just as they have me.
  7. Given his, and my, inability to provide anything except the most speculative answers, could he be confident, can I be confident, in relation to the timing of the drowning? That, at the end of the day, as it seems to me, is what this appeal really comes down to.

 

The appeal was dismissed, but the Court of Appeal went further than saying that His Honour Judge Marston was not shown to be wrong.

 

  1. So far as concerns Judge Marston, I have no doubt that the appeal must be dismissed, essentially for the reasons so succinctly articulated by McFarlane LJ. Despite all Mr Ekaney’s very considerable and very skilful endeavours, Judge Marston’s ultimate conclusion is, in my judgment, unassailable. In the light of all the evidence, and in particular in the light of what he heard when listening to the recording, he was entitled to conclude as he did and for the reasons he gave.
  2. That suffices to dispose of the appeal, but in these very unusual circumstances I can, and should, go further. As I have said, having listened to the recording, I am convinced that the judge was right. What I was listening to during the first nine minutes or so was a baby who had not then been drowned. From this it follows inexorably, given all the other evidence, that the mother’s 999 call was false and that the drowning which took place at some point thereafter but before Mr Mahoney arrived was indeed deliberate. I have anxiously asked myself whether I can truly be that confident, given that I am left speculating, as was Judge Marston, on important matters to which such a finding necessarily invites attention. I can only say that, despite my inability to provide more than speculative answers to those questions, I am convinced by what I heard. The recording is, to anyone who has heard it, extraordinarily compelling. It drives one inexorably to the conclusion at which Judge Marston arrived.

 

This must have been a very terrible case to deal with. I’m sure that in order to deal with it properly, those involved had to listen to that harrowing tape many many times. Having had to listen to that sort of tape myself , I know that it stays with you very vividly for many years, and never completely leaves you.

 

Cases like this are of course, very very rare.  When children are injured, it is more usually a momentary lapse, a loss of self-control or careless handling without thought to the strength that an adult can bring to bear.  Sometimes, as in this case   Cumbria CC v Q 2015http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2015/59.html , something that looks like horrific abuse can actually have an innocent explanation.  That case took 18 medical witnesses to arrive at the juidicial finding that the baby had rickets and thus had a propensity to fracture more easily than an average child.  Up until that point, there had been features  that would have led anyone to be deeply suspicious (both parents had convictions for violent offences, the parents had given inconsistent evidence and lied about things, the injuries were multiple, serious and ‘classic’ nai type injuries)

 

It really is very rare, that as here, something happens that leads a parent to deliberately set out to harm their child.

 

From what is reported here, there was nothing that could have led anyone to predict that this might happen, and so we are fortunate that mother made the 999 call and that a paramedic arrived. This does not appear to have been something that could have been predicted or prevented before it happened.  If someone had ever alleged that such a risk was likely, or even theoretically possible, before it happened, they would have looked a fool.  Hopefully nothing like this will ever happen again.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Adoption statistics

Posted on June 29, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

The Government have published their statistics (there’s a time delay, so these are the stats up to Autumn 2014)

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/436613/ALB_Business_Intelligence_Quarter_3_2014_to_2015.pdf

 

I suspect that the headline one  (which prompted all of those press releases in late April) is going to be this:-

 

 

Quarterly data suggests that the number of new decisions has continued to fall from 1,830 in quarter 2 2013-14 to 910 in quarter 3 2014-15, a decrease of 50%. The number of new placement orders have also continued to fall from 1,550 in quarter 2 2013-14 to 740 in quarter 3 2014-15, a decrease of 52%.

 

 

What they don’t have, is a measure of how many cases LA’s put before an Agency Decision Maker, so we can’t tell whether

 

  • Social workers were asking ADM’s for adoption approval less often, so less cases were approved
  • ADM’s were refusing a higher proportion of requests than previously, so less cases were approved
  • A combination of those factors  (which if so, would lead to even more of a drop – if social workers were only giving their ‘best’ cases for adoption to the ADM, but they were being knocked back, then you’d expect less and less cases to go to the ADM)

 

[And of course, what underpins all of that is whether social workers / ADMs were being overly cautious about the case law and not asking for adoption in cases where the Court would actually have made Placement Orders, or whether they were being realistic and knowing that if they asked for adoption they wouldn’t be capable of satisfying their Court that the tests were met]

 

 

What really fits is the increase stats on Special Guardianship Orders  – I haven’t seen the raw data, but the BBC claim this has tripled since 2012 (BS cough cough)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32840224

 

When you look at the graph showing Agency Decision Maker decisions that adoption should be the plan for the child over time, you can see the numbers drop off a cliff at the time of the Supreme Court decision in Re B (nothing else will do).

 

You can argue (and it is a legitimate argument, where Re B and Re B-S were a new test, or a nudge in the ribs to apply the existing tests with proper rigour, and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing) but you can’t really argue as the current official narrative has it, that this isn’t even a thing. The graphs make it really obvious.

The quarter BEFORE Re B-S, 1830 decisions by ADMs that adoption was the right plan for the child. Re B-S hit in September 2013, so it would be the third quarter of 2013 when ADM’s would have known about it. Those numbers, 1290.  It is the sharpest drop of the entire graph.  It has continued to slope downwards since then, but the bit in the graph that looks like abseiling down the Eiger is Re B-S. You absolutely can’t dispute it.

The Myth-Buster document was published in December 2014, so we can’t see from the stats and graph whether that has led to a reversal of the pattern in the graph. We’ll see that in about six months, I suppose. Similarly, whether the Court of Appeal’s softening of position on “nothing else will do” translates into an increase in ADM decisions that adoption is the plan.

 

[Cynically, I doubt it. I’m well aware that I am not a normal human being in my interest in case law, and I haven’t always had it. For about my first five years in child protection law, you could get by on three cases  Re G (interim care is a deep freeze affording no tactical advantage), H and R  (the nature of the allegation doesn’t increase the standard of proof) and whatever at the time was the law on residential assessments.  Re B and Re B-S, with their hard-hitting message and backed by a soundbite ‘nothing else will do’ resonate with people much more than the inching back, case specific, deeply nuanced and incremental Court of Appeal cases since that time.  Even the Re R case https://suesspiciousminds.com/2014/12/18/re-r-is-b-s-dead/  that was intended to slay the Re B-S myths is so nuanced that it takes nine or ten reads to have a grasp of what it is actually saying, and almost the day after you’ve done that, you couldn’t actually put it into a meaningful summary sentence]

 

 

[I argued before HERE  https://suesspiciousminds.com/2015/05/15/adoption-rates-in-freefall/  that the Press narrative that the case law will mean ‘children suffering in unsuitable and unsafe homes’ is an emotive over-simplification. I’d stand by that. At the moment, the case law on adoption has been going through its most radical changes in a generation, and it is certainly less predictable than it has ever been to decide what sort of case will result in a Placement Order and what won’t.  We are in a period of re-balancing. I don’t know yet whether these figures show that we have found the right level of those cases where adoption IS the right plan to put before the Court, whether there are even more drops to come, or whether there’s an over-reaction to it.   I have a suspicion, given that the entire history of child protection and family justice is about lurches from child rescue to family preservation and vice versa, and an eventual settling down at one particular side of the scale but hopefully not at the absolute far end of the scale…]

 

Given the huge push to recruit adopters – all the Government policies about making it easier, less time-consuming, less intrusive, more appealing , this statistic may get less attention but must be concerning

 

Registrations to become an adopter have decreased by 24% from 1,340 in quarter 2 2014-15 to 1,020 in quarter 3 2014-15. The number of adopter families approved for adoption has decreased by 3% from 1,240 in quarter 2 2014-15 to 1,200 in quarter 3 2014-15.

 

 

We will wait to see how the Court decisions that moved children from prospective adopters to the birth family (which is a completely new phenomenon, having not occurred at all prior to December 2014) has on adoption recruitment and retention.

 

 

The backlog (which had stood at 1 approved adopter for every 3 children approved for adoption) has been nearly cleared.

 

Our most recent estimate for the “adopter gap” suggests that the gap has closed, and we now have more adopters than children waiting. However, there are still 2,600 children with a placement order not yet matched and the relevance of this measure assumes that matching is working effectively.

 

 

The number of adoption ORDERS made is, they claim the highest since recording began

 

3,740 children adopted in quarters 1 to 3 2014-15

2013-14 saw the highest number of adoptions from care since the current data collection began in 1992, with 5,050 children adopted from care.

 

 

When I have looked at Court stats on adoption http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition=tcm%3A77-316163   5050 looks like a pretty average year, with there having been figures nearly 50 per cent higher in the earlier 1990s.   (Now, it may be that the measure that is being used here is “Adoption of children who are in care” and that the Office of National Statistics figure bundles that in with ‘step-parent adoptions’,  so it is not a like-for-like comparison)

 

 

 

Finally, this statistic initially looks positive (how long does it take between a child coming into care and a child being placed for adoption  – you’d WANT that number to go down, since whether you want more or less children being adopted, most of us could agree that we wouldn’t want children to wait so long for a family to be found)

 

In 2013-14, the average number of days between entering care and placement was 594 days, an improvement from 656 days in 2012-13. Latest quarterly data suggests there has been a further improvement to 533 days. At 216 days, the average number of days between placement order and match in 2013-14 was a slight improvement on 2012-13. However, the latest quarterly data suggests that this has increased to 241 during quarter 3 2014-15.

 

 

The closer inspection is this :-

 

That since the 2012 figures, there has been legislation and huge resources expended on bringing care proceedings down from what was an average of 55 weeks to a target of 26 weeks.  That OUGHT to have had far more of an impact than 60 days being shaved off the time between entering care and a family being found.  It should be something more like a saving of 200 days. As the time from Placement Order to placement had gone slightly down (but was now going back up), that SUGGESTS that IF there is a saving of 30 weeks from start of care proceedings to Placement Order, but it results in only a time saving of 8 ½ weeks,  that there’s about 20 weeks unaccounted for.

 

Does that mean that :-

 

  • Whilst average time of care proceedings has gone down, it hasn’t gone down as MUCH for cases where adoption is the plan?  (That makes sense, as those are the ones that are most contentious and where all avenues tend to be exhausted?)
  • There’s been an increase in the time that children who go on to be adopted are spending in care PRIOR to care proceedings?  That “front-loading” element.

 

 

I don’t know how or if statistics on those issues are being kept.  It must be problematic that if we are compressing the time that care proceedings take, with all that involves, but barely reducing the time that a child waits between coming into care and a new family being found, have we really improved anything for the child?   (Note particularly that with the latest quarterly data, HALF the time that has been cut appears to have been lost by an increase in the family finding process.  216 days of family finding and matching post Placement Order equates to 30 weeks)

 

 

The notional 200 day saving from faster care proceedings isn’t turning into a real saving, and that feels counter-intuitive. What we’ve been told for years is that if decisions about children are made by the Courts quicker, the children will be easier to place  – they will be younger and have less issues (and thus, you’d assume, faster to place).

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Someone had blunder’d

Posted on June 12, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

In these times where every week seems to give family practitioners another raft of guidance to follow, another lecture on how awful we all are for not doing this that and the other and another bout of finger wagging, this case might make some of us happy.

 

Re J (A child) 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2015/1627.html

 

In which there was a terrible cock-up, and it wasted a lot of time and money, and was unfair and an apology had to be made. But for once, it was the Court having to say that they got it wrong, rather than wagging fingers at everyone else. Even more sweet because the apology was delivered by the President himself.  (Fair play to him, he came out and did it straight)

 

This was a case where mother was told by Pauffley J to return her child to America forthwith. Mother made an application to appeal.  That application came before King LJ as a paperwork request. The mother and her solicitors were told that the application for permission to appeal was refused. A stay had been made to prevent Pauffley J’s order taking effect for 3 weeks, to allow the application for permission to appeal to come before the Court of Appeal for an oral application.

 

When that 3 week period expired, father applied to the High Court for enforcement of the order (as he was entitled to), because the child had not been returned to America. The case came before the President on 29th May 2015 and the President made a series of orders, including an order to seize mother’s passport.

 

What the President did not know, and what none of thelawyers  knew, was that King LJ had extended the stay to 12th June (at a hearing where mother appeared in person and permission to appeal was refused). Everyone knew that permission to appeal had been refused, but nobody (save the mother and King LJ knew about the stay being extended)

 

So, at the time that the President was making really serious orders (the tipstaff going out and forcibly taking mother’s passport away from her) on the basis of mother being in breach of Pauffley J’s order, the Court had already granted a stay of that order. The mother was  not in breach of the Court order.

 

Rather embarrassingly, it was the mother who had to notify the Court when she was served with the President’s order, drawn on the basis that she was in breach of Pauffley J’s order that she (and apparently she alone) was in possession of knowledge that King LJ had extended the stay until 12th June and thus she wasn’t in breach.

 

 

  • So far as concerns events after I had made the orders on 29 May 2015, what appears to have happened was this. When the passport order was executed on 31 May 2015, by police officers acting on the authority of the Tipstaff, the mother complained and spoke to the Tipstaff by telephone. He was told by her that the Court of Appeal had granted a stay until 12 June 2015. Quite properly, and clothed with the authority of the passport order I had made, he indicated that my order would nonetheless be enforced. The police officers accordingly seized the mother’s passport.
  • The Tipstaff communicated what the mother had said to him to Dawson Cornwell in a telephone conversation at about 9.30am on 1 June 2015. Dawson Cornwell emailed the CAO at 10.50am, setting out the history of the matter in appropriate detail, attaching a copy of the order I had made on 29 May 2015, and saying:

 

“We today spoke to … the Tipstaff. He confirmed that he spoke to the Mother on the telephone yesterday when the officers attended her property. She informed him that it was her understanding that the Court of Appeal had told her that she was to return to the USA by 12 June 2015. We have not been informed of this, nor has our client. Please would you urgently confirm if this is the case?”

They added:

“We should be most grateful to hear from you as to whether the Court of Appeal has indeed set the return date for 12 June 2015.”

Dawson Cornwell received no response from the CAO. Later the same day, and apparently as a result of a request from her, the CAO emailed the mother, sending her a copy of the draft of the order made by King LJ, saying that it was awaiting approval by the judge.

 

  • The next day, 2 June 2015, King LJ’s order of 22 May 2015 was sealed. It was emailed to the mother and the father by the CAO at 16.26. That email was not copied to Dawson Cornwell or anyone else. Almost immediately, however, the mother sent the order to the office of the Clerk of the Rules, which helpfully passed it on immediately to Dawson Cornwell. Very promptly, and very properly, Dawson Cornwell emailed the mother’s solicitors the same afternoon a letter saying:

 

“Given that a stay of execution has been granted by the Court of Appeal, we confirm that we will not seek to enforce paragraph 7 of the Order of the President of the Family Division of 29 May 2105 until 23.59 on 12 June 2015, in the event of your client’s non-compliance with that Order.”

The mother’s solicitors responded by email (by now it was 17.40) saying that they had emailed the letter to their client. On the morning of 4 June 2015 the mother emailed Dawson Cornwell asserting that there was a stay of execution until 12 June 2015.

 

  • I have set out the unhappy history of the matter in some detail, but the key fact is stark and simple. When I made the orders on 29 May 2015 I was unaware that King LJ had granted a stay until 12 June 2015. That fact alone, irrespective of how it had come about, necessitated the setting aside of the relevant parts of my order. As the order I made on 4 June 2015 recited, I was:

 

“setting aside the order … dated 29 May 2015 on the basis of inadvertent non-disclosure of critical information (that being that the Court of Appeal granted the mother a stay of execution of the order of 24 April 2015 until 12 June 2015).”

Paragraphs 7 and 9 of the order of 29 May 2015 were simply inconsistent with the stay.

 

  • Had I known of the stay, I would still have been prepared to make the passport order, and the orders consequential upon the passport order, for the basis of that order was the mother’s non-compliance with the earlier order made on 20 March 2015 by the Deputy Judge, and the need for such an order, in all the circumstances, was not affected by the stay. That is why I have not set them aside. Had I known of the stay I would not, however, have been prepared to grant any other relief. It would have been premature to do so while the stay was in force.
  • I wish to make it absolutely clear that, in my judgment, no criticism of any kind attaches to Dawson Cornwell, Ms Hutchinson or Ms Chaudhry. Given the terms of the email sent by the CAO on 26 May 2015, especially when contrasted with the language of the earlier email sent by Ms Said on 7 May 2015, they were entitled to assume that there was no longer any stay in place. Certainly, when I read that email on 29 May 2015 it never occurred to me that there might be a stay. After all, King LJ had refused permission to appeal, so there could be no question of a stay pending an application to the Supreme Court. And given the critical significance of a stay, any reader of the email from the CAO dated 26 May 2015 was surely entitled to assume that, if a stay had been granted, the news that “permission to appeal is refused” would have been caveated by a reference to the fact that there was nonetheless a stay. Most unhappily, it was not.
  • There is one further matter I must place on record. On the afternoon of 22 May 2015, King LJ’s clerk had emailed the Clerk of the Rules with the information that King LJ had extended the stay until 12 June 2015. Again most unhappily, the information in that email, which of course was unknown to Dawson Cornwell, was not passed on to me when I was dealing with the matter on 29 May 2015. It did not come to my attention until later in the afternoon following the hearing before me on 4 June 2015.
  • The mother and J are entitled to an unreserved apology for what has happened. It should not have happened. It did happen. I am very sorry that it did. I hope that nothing similar happens again. Procedures in the court offices will, no doubt, be tightened up in the light of what this most unfortunate case has revealed.

 

 

I note that in looking at the reasons why a Court did not know that extremely relevant Court orders on the case had been made which would have transformed the Court’s thinking, it is a shame that the President did not refer to the seminal case of Right Hand versus Left Hand  (ex parte Escher) 1854  in which it was held that the Left Hand had no knowledge of what the Right Hand was doing and vice versa.

 

Perhaps we need a brand new Monopoly card

Court error in your favour. Collect ten red faces!

Court error in your favour. Collect ten red faces!

 

It is mean of me to gloat. Everyone can make mistakes, even very significant ones like this. We are all human beings, and working under pressure and tight deadlines. The Court, like all of us, is only human.

 

As Alexander Pope said, “To err is human, to forgive, divine”

 

So on behalf of those of us who have been getting nothing but lectures and grief from judgments, speeches, Practice Directions and Views about how every tiny thing we do we are doing wrong and the solution is to become more cumbersome, time-consuming and intricate over the last two years, Mr President, we forgive you.

 

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Experts and fairness

Posted on June 11, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

The Court of Appeal decision in Re C (a child) 2015 raises a number of important practice points. There are some important NEW things, which I’ve indicated with a NEW   subheading.  The NEW thing on litigants in person (that the judicial training and best practice is for them to take the oath at the start of the hearing so that all of their representations are effectively evidence and on oath), is a substantial new development. I can also see that where one party is represented and the other not, that the unrepresented party will perceive some unfairness in one party having sworn that everything they say in Court shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and the other party not having given the same oath.

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2015/539.html

 

This arose from a dispute over contact (Child Arrangements) between a mother who was represented by counsel and a father who was appearing in person and for whom English was not his first language. The case came before the Magistrates and mother, through counsel, made a request that father should undertake a psychological assessment.

There was no formal application and none of the requirements of Part 25 had been complied with.  Nor did the Court approach it on the correct statutory basis – that it is for the person seeking an expert to be instructed to satisfy the Court that it is necessary.  This was appealed to a circuit Judge, who upheld the decision.

 

As the Court of Appeal said

It is a matter of some surprise that both of these decisions were made as if the statutory scheme and the Rules simply did not exist. That is unacceptable and it is necessary to explain why, so that the same error does not occur again.

 

Some very quick practice points:-

 

1. The father could not be compelled to undertake a psychological assessment against his will. The original order was that father should  ‘submit’ to a psychological assessment, telling words.

The order made by the magistrates also fell into error in two other respects a) in the way in which it was worded so as to direct the father to undertake what was a medical assessment and b) in the manner in which the costs of the expert were to be provided for. I can take the first error shortly. It is an elementary principle that a competent adult cannot be ordered to have a medical procedure. A psychological assessment of the kind anticipated by the direction made in this case is a medical procedure. If psychological expert evidence is necessary and, as is likely if it is going to have any weight, it involves one or more of the adults or children in the family, the direction should be that the parties concerned ‘have permission to instruct ….. etc’. That should be accompanied by a warning explained to the parties in court about the negative inferences that the court can draw if a party fails to co-operate or comply. That warning should be included in the record that forms part of the court’s order i.e. as a recital.

 

What a Court can do is indicate that a psychological assessment is necessary, and invite a parent to participate in it, and advise the parent that they may not be able to allay concerns if they don’t participate. I.e if there is compelling evidence that a parent has a psychological problem and that instructing a psychologist would allow that evidence to be countered, or a proper understanding of the nature and degree of the problem and prognosis for change isn’t available, that might remain a concern of the Court when it comes to making final decisions.

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The Court of Appeal suggest that it is good practice to include in the order a judicial warning about the consequences to the party in not engaging with the assessment (which must include parents who have agreed to the assessment, in case they do not turn up to appointments)

 

Only if the evidence justifies the necessity should permission be given to adduce expert evidence. Only in that circumstance should a party be at risk of a negative inference being drawn from a failure to comply. It is good practice to include the risk of a negative inference being drawn from non-compliance as a recital to an order giving permission.

The Court making an order compelling father to submit to an assessment that he did not agree to submit to, in itself would have been sufficient to win the appeal – since father wasn’t in agreement, the order made was improper.

2. The costs were split equally, even though father was a litigant in person (and would thus be paying his share himself, whereas mother’s would be on legal aid) without any exploration of whether he could afford it.

The costs of the expert were expressed to be apportioned equally between the parties with the expectation that the mother’s costs would be provided for by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA). No attempt was made to ascertain father’s financial position with the consequence that his ability to pay was unknown. One must also observe that because part 25 was not complied with the court did not know whether the report would cost £4,000 or £10,000. One might think that was a matter of some importance. Likewise, it was an unwarranted assumption that the LAA would pay half the costs. There was no indication from them by way of prior authority or otherwise to that effect and the reasons given by the magistrates came nowhere near that which would ordinarily be required to satisfy their guidance (not least because neither part 25 of the Rules nor the statutory criteria in section 13 had been complied with).

 

3. The Court wrongly approached it as being the father’s obligation to show why the assessment wasn’t necessary. AND in their reasons simply recited the mother’s submissions without engaging in any analysis

  1. A flavour of the proceedings can be ascertained from this exchange between the chairman of the bench and the father in response to Ms. Slee’s application and submissions:

    Q “The mother is making an allegation that she believes she cannot agree to contact because she believes you may have a psychological problem that needs addressing”.

    A “But that is wrong”.

    Q “Well, that has yet to be proved. What I would like you to do, yes, it is to address the court as to why you think that is not necessary…………”.

  2. The obligation was placed on the father to demonstrate that a report was unnecessary. That was simply wrong. In the subsequent exchanges between the parties and the legal advisor there is regrettably an inference that because the mother has made her allegations then without anything further, let alone any evidence, the father must justify his position. There is no reference to any evidence by anyone and no consideration in that context of a proper and fair process.

 

AND

  1. The written reasons for the decision given by the magistrates are as follows:

    “We agree with [the mother] that any report in these proceedings should be independent and instructed by the court not by either of the parties. We consider that a report on [the father] is necessary in order for us to progress contact further. We have been presented with a number of different applications in this case and we have made little progress since February 2014. We need to ensure that contact is safe for [the child] and if contact progresses we will need to be sure that [the child] can be safe in the care of [the father] outside of a contact centre. We have concerns about the way in which [the father] is dealing with this application, for instance the videoing of [the child] within the contact centre, a complete breach of contact centre rules and the number of applications made to this court with the inability to focus on the contact application. We therefore consider that in order to rule out any psychological issues, we require a report in relation to [the father]”.

  2. That was no more than a recital of the mother’s case without analysis. It was not an analysis which had regard to the evidence or the criteria set out in s13(7) of the 2014 Act. The magistrates did not reason why they disagreed with the cogent advice of the FCA as they were obliged to do having regard to the terms of the statutory scheme and the procedural code.

4. The Court of Appeal will be slow to intervene on case management decisions of a Court, but where they have not followed the procedure and law, the Court of Appeal will intervene if asked.  Therefore, a properly formulated Part 25 application is essential  (particularly if the instruction is contested)

I entirely accept that case management is an art best practised by the judge who has conduct of the proceedings and that this court should be very slow indeed to intervene to substitute its own view. That said, welfare and procedural justice are key components of the task and if they are missing this court will be bound to intervene. I need go no further than to repeat the conclusion of the President at paragraph [37] of Re TG:

“37. None of this, of course, is intended to encourage excess on the part of case management judges or inappropriate deference on the part of the Court of Appeal. There is, as always, a balance to be struck. As Black LJ went on to observe in RE B, para [48]:

“Robust case management…..very much has its place in family proceedings but it also has its limits.”

I respectfully agree. The task of the case management judge is to arrange a trial that is fair; fair, that is, judged both by domestic standards and by the standards mandated by Articles 6 and 8. The objective is that spelt out in rule 1.1 of the Family Procedure Rules 2010, namely a trial conducted “justly”, “expeditiously and fairly” and in a way which is “proportionate to the nature, importance and complexity of the issues”, but never losing sight of the need to have regard to the welfare issues involved.

 

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5. Protection for litigants in person

 

The Court of Appeal discussed the training that the judiciary have had to protect litigants in person. They point out that it is good practice to put the litigant on person on oath at the start of the hearing, so that all of their representations are classed as evidence. Not having had the judicial training, I was unaware of this. It is important to know this, so that if you are in Court with a litigant in person you know whether the Court has taken that step (or formally decided not to and set out a short explanation as to the reason for the deviation)

  1. I shall digress for a moment to consider the means by which a fair process can be afforded to a litigant in person whose language is not English, particularly in a hearing where the other party is represented. There are professional statements of good practice which already exist to ensure that a party in this position is afforded proper access to justice. The implementation of the family justice reforms has included teaching provided by the Judicial College to judges about that good practice. Magistrates sit in the Family Court as judges of that court in accordance with the Crime and Courts Act 2013. They are afforded the same teaching as professional judges. I shall simply take note of the training they have had. The practice that is recommended is that litigants in person are sworn at the outset of the hearing so that their representations can be used as evidence. They should each be asked to set out their case (preferably without interruption and in a fixed time window) and they should be encouraged by the court to answer any relevant propositions put by the other party. The court should identify the key issues for them and put the same issues to each of them at the beginning or end of the statements they are invited to make.
  2. The court should ask the applicant to reply to any matters he or she has not covered before making a decision. Questions which either party want to ask of the other party, assuming that the representations are to be relied upon as evidence, should be asked through the judge where the questioner is a litigant in person so that inappropriate control is not exercised by one party over the other and irrelevant questions can be avoided.
  3. This was not the process used by the magistrates and their legal advisor. Given that such a process might have facilitated a fairer hearing for the father in this case, it is regrettable that it or a similar appropriate process was not used. Give the number of litigants in person in the Family Court the time may have come for this process to be formalised into practice guidance or a practice direction.

 

 

The really sad thing in this case is that there have been three hearings about a psychological assessment, when it appears that the chief complaint against father was that he took photographs during his contact. That particular nut was cracked with a hydrogen bomb rather than the proverbial sledgehammer.

 

  1. This court knows from the transcript and from a Cafcass report of 9 September 2014 which was before the magistrates that the FCA had concluded that there were no safeguarding issues, that the risk of domestic violence was low and that the child enjoyed contact with his father. The FCA’s aim had been to achieve fortnightly unsupervised contact in the community in due course and there was no obvious reason why that would not have been practicable or in the child’s best interests.
  2. In that context what had the father allegedly done? He had photographed his son in the contact centre setting which had led to the sessions being suspended because that was a breach of the centre’s rules. He had made an allegation about the maternal grandfather which I think amounted to excess chastisement (which is an allegation not yet been determined by a court), and he had made his applications to the court. As the magistrates’ reasons record he was criticised by the mother for his behaviour during contact and for his inability to focus on and take advice about the applications before the court.

 

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