Tag Archives: mostyn j

I have a warrant for your arrest… oh, no I don’t.

Posted on December 23, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

This must be every lawyer’s worst nightmare, to confidently tell a Judge that he has jurisdiction to do what you are asking for and be wrong, and worse yet to have that judgment published as precedent that others rely on and then have the Judge have to publish a retraction judgment.

 

Al-Baker v Al-Baker 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2015/3725.html

 

From the much-loved by this site Mostyn J.

Here, where a husband in ancillary relief proceedings had been declared to be guilty of contempt of court and ordered that he be imprisoned for nine months as a result, but was in another European Country, counsel for the wife  (NOT Mr Todd QC who was representing her in this hearing, NOT him, someone else) had asked Mostyn J to issue a European arrest warrant, so that the husband could be arrested abroad and brought back to this country for punishment.

 

  1. On 27th October 2015 I gave a judgment in this case ([2015] EWHC 3229 (Fam)), where I found the husband to be guilty of contempt of court and sentenced him to nine months’ imprisonment. During the case counsel then appearing for the wife applied to me to back my committal order with the issue of a European arrest warrant.
  2. In para.10 of my judgment I said this:

    “The wife is proceeding on advice that this is a sensible way of advancing her claim and it is not for me to question that. It has been asserted that this being a sentence of nine months it would be open for this court to request that a European arrest warrant be issued. That would have the effect of detaining the respondent anywhere within the European Union and having him brought to this court if the European arrest warrant procedure is available. I confess that when I first read this I was surprised that it was being asserted that the arrest warrant procedure was available as it was my belief (it is fair to say not based on much education) that the European arrest warrant was confined only to what can strictly be described as criminal offences and a civil contempt was not in that category. However, Mr. Calhaem has placed before me the Council Framework Decision of 13th June 2002 on the European arrest warrant and Surrender Procedures between Member States of which Article 2.1 states:

    ‘A European arrest warrant may be issued for acts punishable by the law of the issuing Member State by a custodial sentence or a detention order for a maximum period of at least 12 months or, where a sentence has been passed or a detention order has been made, for sentences of at least four months.’

    The use of language for “acts punishable by law” would certainly embrace a custodial penalty imposed for contempt of court and, recognising I have only heard only one side, I am satisfied in these circumstances that the sentence I have awarded is properly to be backed by a request for a European arrest warrant and I will complete the necessary annex form when the order is made.”

  3. That passage shows my initial surprise that it was suggested that the issue of the warrant was a legitimate course. As it happens, it was, in fact, a completely illegitimate course. The decision of the Supreme Court of R v O’Brien [2014] UKSC 23 confirms, first, that a European arrest warrant can only be sought by an appropriate person and that counsel for the wife would not constitute such an appropriate person and, secondly, that the scheme does not act to encompass civil contempts, even if they result in a sentence of imprisonment.
  4. It is a matter of some surprise to me that this recent decision from the highest court had not been alighted upon by those representing the wife when they made the application that they did. This has resulted in me giving a judgment which is legally incorrect and which, for all I know, may have led other people in other cases to have applied for a European arrest warrant following a finding of contempt. So I take the opportunity today to correct my previous judgment so as to delete para.10 and to confirm that the European arrest warrant procedure is not available in contempt proceedings.

 

We don’t really get to learn whether the European Arrest Warrant was ever acted upon, but if it had been, the Court could have been on the hook for a wrongful imprisonment claim.

 

The other thing of interest in this judgment was the long-time favourite issue of this blog – perjury.

 

In particular, whether a person who is found to have lied in their statement has committed perjury. Mostyn J thinks not.  [Unless it is an affidavit or sworn statement]

 

 

  1. In the skeleton argument produced for this hearing, at para.24, it is said this:

    “It is clear from H’s statement of 16th April 2015 (D45) that H has perjured himself in relation to his alleged business dealings in Dubai. He says within that statement (see paragraph 84 at D68) that he does not own property in the Emirates and, in correspondence, has never owned any. This is clearly incompatible with the evidence produced from the wife’s Dubai lawyers in their affidavit at D88. H has lied”.

  2. The material to which I am directed by that passage is contained in a statement made by the husband which was verified by a statement of truth under Part 17 of the Family Procedure Rules. The statement itself was not sworn. To make a false statement, as opposed to a false affidavit, is not perjury. This was by design of those who framed the Civil Procedure Rules which have been mirrored by the Family Procedure Rules. To file a false statement is a contempt of court but it is not perjury. To file a false statement can lead to an order for civil committal for up to two years, but it cannot lead to criminal proceedings for perjury. Arguably it could lead to criminal proceedings under the Fraud Act but it cannot lead to criminal proceedings for perjury.

 

 

I think that Mostyn J is quite right here, though I was slightly surprised when I first read it. The wording of the offence from the Perjury Act 1911 is here

 

If any person lawfully sworn as a witness or as an interpreter in a judicial proceeding wilfully makes a statement material in that proceeding, which he knows to be false or does not believe to be true, he shall be guilty of perjury, and shall, on conviction thereof on indictment, be liable to penal servitude for a term not exceeding seven years, or to imprisonment . . . F1 for a term not exceeding two years, or to a fine or to both such penal servitude or imprisonment and fine.

 

A statement which is signed, even with the Statement of Truth, is not a sworn statement, for the purposes of the Perjury Act 1911.

If the author of the statement repeats the lie during oral evidence, where they ARE giving SWORN evidence, the offence would be committed.

I am now pondering whether this is captured during the standard opening question in Evidence in Chief  “Can you confirm that the contents of your statement are true and accurate to the best of your knowledge and belief?”

If you say yes to this, and there is a lie in your statement, has that answer amounted to perjury, or does the offence only arise when the question about the particular matter is put to you and you lie in answer.

 

In any event everyone, lying to the Court is wrong, mmmm’kay?

 

mmmkay

 

 

 

The wife then made an allegation that the father had committed perjury in his Form E, which is of course a sworn statement and was asking that the police be notified of the offence of perjury. As Mostyn J pointed out, whether or not the father was lying in the Form E was a matter that was disputed and still to be litigated within the ancillary relief proceedings.  It would not be a Mostyn J judgment if we did not learn a new word in it, and here it is “pendency” – in the state of being pending and specificaially with litigation whilst it is still ongoing and not concluded .  (I’m not entirely sure myself what ‘in the pendency of the litigation’ adds to the alternative wording of ‘whilst the litigation is ongoing’ but such is life)

 

 

  1. However, it is the wife’s application, pursuant to what appears on the face of her notice of application, that at this stage, during the pendency of the case, there should now be a reference to the police of her allegation of perjury. This is, to my belief, wholly unprecedented. Mr. Todd is constrained to agree that he cannot identify any case in the ancillary relief field where there has been a reference to the police of perjury or fraud during the pendency of proceedings. Moreover, under the comparable jurisdiction which is incorporated in CPR 31.22(1), which requires the court’s permission to reveal disclosed documents to any third party, Mr. Todd has been unable to identify one case where there has been a reference to the police of fraud or perjury during the pendency of the proceedings, where the very allegation that is sought to be referred to the police is in issue in those proceedings.
  2. In my judgment, this application has been made prematurely. It seems to me that the motive is to replace the pressure of the European arrest warrant with a different kind of pressure to try and bring the husband, who is steadfastly not engaging in the proceedings (he is not negotiating, to my knowledge, or making proper disclosure), to heel in order that the case can be adjudicated fairly. But that is not a proper motive for seeking what, in my mind, is a premature reference to the police. In my judgment, it would be wholly wrong for this court to refer these matters to the police in advance of its judgment on those very matters and for these reasons the application is dismissed.
  3. However, I want to make it clear, when dismissing the application, that I am not in so doing preventing the wife from making a comparable application once judgment on her main claim has been rendered. No question will arise of issue estoppel or other abusive of conduct on her part. If, following the giving of judgment in this case and the making of findings, the wife nonetheless thinks it is appropriate to invoke the criminal justice procedures then it will be open to her to make a fresh application in the terms of her application of 4th November 2015.

 

I always love that Mostyn J is not averse to using footnotes in his judgments, and there is one here which I’ve not encountered before [the second].

 

  1. LATER
  3. Mr. Todd applies for permission to appeal. Under FPR 30.3(7) permission to appeal may only be given where (a) a court considers the appeal would have a real prospect of success or (b) there was some other compelling reason why the appeal should be allowed. In my judgment, an appeal would not have a real prospect of success. It would have no prospect of success at all. Furthermore, I cannot identify any other compelling reason why the appeal should be heard. The fact that there has never before been a case in the annals where a reference has been made during the pendency of proceedings to my mind hardly supplies a compelling reason why an appeal should be heard. To my mind, the empirical evidence suggests quite the opposite, that this is an appeal which should not be heard. LATER STILL
  4. Although para 1 of this judgment makes it perfectly clear on a natural reading that counsel who “then” appeared on 27 October 2015 was not the same as counsel who appeared on this occasion, and although a reading of the first judgment referred to there would have confirmed this to be the case, Mr Todd QC is highly insistent that this is spelt out in this judgment. I am doubtful that the clarification procedure extends to requests for editorialisation for counsel’s personal reasons, but this additional paragraph has that effect.

 

 

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Bickering (or the ever decreasing circle of life continues)

Posted on November 14, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

[Grateful to @dilettantevoice for highlighting this case to me on Twitter]

 

You may recall the Court of Appeal taking Mostyn J to task for taking them to task for taking him to task.

Ever decreasing circles – Court of Appeal take Mostyn J to task for taking them to task for taking him to task…

 

Well, none of you thought that it would end there, did you?

Re CD 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2015/74.html

An exceptionally tricky case, and one absolutely can’t underestimate just how difficult a job High Court Judges have to do. This one involved a woman with very severe mental health problems, who after she stabbed herself in the stomach, the hospital found that she had tumours in her stomach that needed to be removed. Although the woman was detained under the Mental Health Act, the power to perform treatment against a person’s will under that Act is really confined to treatment for their mental health, and this was a physical treatment. As the woman would be under anesthetic at the time, the High Court has previously ruled that this would be a deprivation of liberty.

A NHS Trust v A [2013] EWHC 2442(Fam) [2014] Fam 161

Additionally, there’s the complication of some wording in the Mental Capacity Act which suggests that a deprivation of liberty can only be dealt with under the Mental Health Act if the person is detained under the Mental Health Act.

 

 

  • he confusion surrounding the main test is mirrored by the confusion that the interface with the MHA gives rise to. I recently have had to grapple with this in Re A [2015] EWCOP 71. Mr Justice Baker has given a characteristically exhaustive judgment on the subject in A NHS Trust v A [2013] EWHC 2442(Fam) [2014] Fam 161 as has Judge Parry in A Local Health Board v AB [2015] EWCOP 31. The confusion arises from the highly ambiguous and double negative laden terms of para 3(2) of Schedule 1A to the MCA 2005. This states:

 

“P is ineligible if the authorised course of action is not in accordance with a requirement which the relevant regime imposes”

 

  • In this case CD is P. “Ineligible” means ineligible to be deprived of liberty by the 2005 Act. The “authorised course of action” is the surgical removal of the ovarian masses. The “relevant regime” is the MHA regime whereby CD is compulsorily detained in a mental hospital. So, for our purposes, para 3(2) reads:

 

“CD is ineligible to be deprived of liberty by the 2005 Act if the surgical removal of the ovarian masses is not in accordance with a requirement which the MHA regime whereby CD is compulsorily detained in a mental hospital imposes.”

 

  • Mr Auburn rightly says that there are two ways of reading this which give rise to directly contradictory results. The first is in a pitilessly literal way, as argued by Mr Matthewson. It is this: if the surgical removal of the ovarian masses is not in accordance with a requirement of the MHA regime whereby CD is compulsorily detained in a mental hospital then CD is ineligible to be deprived of liberty by the 2005 Act. It isn’t, he says, so she is ineligible and so the necessary orders have to be made under the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court. The problem with this interpretation is that it gives rise to a result directly contrary to the intention of the statute and to the express terms of the Code of Practice, as I explained in Re A at paras 10 – 14 (accepting the submissions not only of Ms Butler-Cole but also of Ms Dolan, on that occasion instructed by the Official Solicitor).
  • The alternative interpretation, which I adopted in Re A, and which I maintain to be correct is this: if the MHA regime whereby CD is compulsorily detained in a mental hospital imposes a specific requirement for dealing with the problem of the ovarian masses then CD is ineligible to be deprived of her liberty under the 2005 Act for the purposes of dealing with the problem by a different procedure under that Act. It doesn’t (obviously) so she isn’t ineligible. As I said in Re A this is plainly what the scheme of section 16A and Schedule 1A intends and the matter is conclusively confirmed by paras 4.50 and 4.51 of the Code of Practice. In my judgment it would be ridiculous if the whole case had to leave the Court of Protection with its statutory powers and enter the High Court exercising common law inherent powers by virtue of a pedantically literal reading of para 3(2).
  • The orders which I make will be made by me sitting in the Court of Protection under powers granted by Parliament in the MCA.

 

 

Mostyn J is utterly and completely right here, the wording of this piece of the legislation is ghastly (double-negatives are really not something that you want in a piece of legislation anywhere, particularly about something so serious) and it has left a serious lacuna in the law.  And you know how High Court Judges tend to solve lacunas in the law – that’s right, the ‘theoreticaly limitless powers of the inherent jurisdiction’  [Though not here, Mostyn eschewing Baker J’s inherent jurisdiction solution to say instead that the power must really remain under the MCA]

 

A very tricky case, and almost all of what Mostyn J says in the judgment is careful, apposite and fair.

Unfortunately, this passage decides to resurrect the quarrel with both the Supreme Court in Cheshire West, and the Court of Appeal

 

In KW & Ors v Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council [2015] EWCA Civ 1054 at para 32 the Court of Appeal stated “even if Cheshire West is wrong, there is nothing confusing about it”. It may seem that way from the lofty heights of the Court of Appeal; and of course the literal words of the Supreme Court’s test are perfectly easy to understand. But for we hoplites who have to administer it at first instance the scope and ramifications of the test are, with respect, extremely confusing. As Mr Matthewson, instructed by the Official Solicitor for CD, rightly stated “anyone who deals with this day by day knows this is confusing”. What of the situation where, as here, the protected person actively and fervently expresses the wish to undergo the procedure that is said to amount to a deprivation of liberty? What of the situation, as was the case in Bournemouth Borough Council v PS & Anor [2015] EWCOP 39, where the protected person shows no inclination whatsoever to leave the home where he is cared for round the clock? What of the situation where the protected person is seriously disabled, perhaps bedridden, perhaps in a coma, and is thus physically incapable of exercising the freedom to leave? The answers I received from the Bar when discussing these scenarios belie the blithe suggestion that “there is nothing confusing” about the test. I do not accept the criticism that my approach to these cases is “distorted” by my “passionate” and “tenacious” belief that Cheshire West is wrong. Rather, it is a loyal approach which tries to apply literally and purposively the Supreme Court’s test while at the same time pointing out how confusing and curious it is, to say nothing of the cost it causes to the public purse

 

 

I think that there IS an argument about whether Baker J’s decision in Re A (that the surgical procedure amounts to a deprivation of liberty) actually meets the test in Cheshire West – I think that one can argue it either way and a strong case can be made for if a Court has declared that the procedure is in P’s best interests despite a lack of consent that the patient has had sufficient safeguards and an additional authorisation of a Deprivation of Liberty isn’t necessary.

It is also quite right that we now have a definition of deprivation of liberty which is utterly unworkable in practice due to resource implications (as we have seen, if every LA issued every deprivation of liberty application that they need to on the wording of Cheshire West, the Court would spend the next five years dealing with this years cases, and so on), and that the MCA on this particular issue is badly in need of reform. Such reform not likely to hit us until 2017 at best.

 

But the Rule of Law is the Rule of Law.  Whatever one might think of the Cheshire West test (and personal opinions and critiques of it are perfectly valid – it wasn’t a unanimous decision on all issues in the Supreme Court itself), the test has been set and it is now to be applied.  In the first of the two examples, it is really plain that the absence of resistance from P if they lack capacity is neither here nor there, that’s not a legitimate part of the test. After all, that was the very issue in Bournewood that led to the development of the MCA in  the first place. The latter question of whether you assess whether a person is being deprived of their liberty by looking at their physical characteristics has been squashed by the Supreme Court.

[There IS , I think an argument about whether someone who is physically prevented temporarily from getting up to leave – under anaesthetic for example, or that they have a broken leg that will heal, meets the Cheshire West test. But that’s for a Judge to determine when they are faced with an application of the test to those particular facts]

 

It is a fine line between a Judge being free to criticise the law when it is resulting in unfairness and staying out of politics and just applying the law as it is to the facts of the case.

I’m aware that I am being hypocritical here – because I do think that Judges can and should speak out when the law at present is unfair and makes unreasonable outcomes when it is applied.  Because when Mostyn J and others have attacked LASPO, I’ve supported and applauded them. That is a law whose application is currently unfair (particularly the Legal Aid Agency’s approach to granting exceptional funding where human rights require it, but ignoring when Judges tell them that this particular case would breach a person’s human rights if funding were not given).  I also disagree with LASPO itself, but I’m stuck with it unless and until Parliament changes it. So, am I just as unreasonable as Mostyn J considers the Court of Appeal to be – given that I’m happy for him to critique and attack the law when I agree with him, but criticise him when I think the law is right?

Damn, I’ve painted myself into a corner here.

 

Perhaps what we need is a case with the citation Mostyn J v Court of Appeal  (to be decided in the Supreme Court)

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Ever decreasing circles – Court of Appeal take Mostyn J to task for taking them to task for taking him to task…

Posted on October 22, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

Readers of the blog may be familiar with Mostyn J’s continuing battle to have the Supreme Court change their mind about the deprivation of liberty test set down in Cheshire West, and failing that to simply disagree with their decision at every opportunity.

In this particular case, Rochdale had asked Mostyn J to authorise a care plan for a person lacking capacity that clearly amounted, on the Cheshire West test to a deprivation of liberty.

At the first hearing, Mostyn J told everyone that Cheshire West was nonsense (politely and judicially and intellectually, but that was the gist) and that the person was not being deprived of their liberty and thus there was no need to authorise it.

The case was appealed, and rather unusually, by the time that it got to the Court of Appeal EVERYONE agreed that the Mostyn J judgment should be overturned and that the person was being deprived of their liberty. The Court of Appeal approved a consent order to that effect but did not give a judgment explaining why Mostyn J had been wrong  (perhaps wrongly thinking that where everyone agreed the Judge was wrong and that he had gone against a clear Supreme Court decision with which he did not agree but was not able to distinguish the instant case from, that it was somewhat plain)

 

 

It went back to Mostyn J to authorise or not, the deprivation of liberty. However, he declined and took everyone, including the Court of Appeal to task and said that a consent order without a judgment was not binding on him. And thus did not reach the point of authorising the deprivation, but instead set down a hearing to be conducted by himself as to whether there was a deprivation of liberty at all.

Incredibly bravely (but rightly), the parties appealed THAT, and the Court of Appeal determined it.

[Previous blog on Round 3 of this peculiar litigation is here   https://suesspiciousminds.com/2015/03/16/mostyn-powers/  ]

 

So, by way of catch-up here, in this one case, Mostyn J disagreed with the Supreme Court, then when the Court of Appeal disagreed with him, he disagreed with them. And now the Court of Appeal disagree with him again.

In the midst of all of this, are some real people with real problems to resolve, and a lot of taxpayers money being spent.

KW and Others v Rochdale MBC 2015

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2015/1054.html

 

The Court of Appeal pull no punches whatsoever. In fact I understand that this was very much what it looked like when the Master of the Rolls removed his gloves after the judgment

 

 

The Master of the Rolls does not have to go through the metal detectors en route to the Court room

The Master of the Rolls does not have to go through the metal detectors en route to the Court room

 

But first, the technical part of the appeal – if the Court of Appeal approve a consent order overturning the decision of the original Judge but don’t give a judgment, is the case actually overturned? (I understand that this is actually one of the lesser known and unpopular Zen koans)

 

The grounds of appeal from the second judgment

 

  • The principal ground of appeal is that the judge misinterpreted the consent order when he said that the Court of Appeal had not decided that KW was being deprived of her liberty.
  • We accept that (i) nowhere does the order explicitly state that there was a deprivation of liberty; and (ii) the use in para 2 of the order of the words “to the extent that the restrictions in place pursuant to the Care Plan are a deprivation of KW’s liberty, such liberty is hereby authorised” might suggest that the court was not deciding that the restrictions were in fact a deprivation of liberty. But read in their context, that is clearly not the correct interpretation for at least two reasons. First, para 2 must be read in the light of para 1, which governs the whole order. Para 1 states that the appeal is allowed. The remaining paragraphs set out the court’s directions consequential upon the allowing of the appeal. When read together with section 6 of the notice of appeal, the order that the appeal was allowed necessarily involved the court deciding that KW’s care package does involve a deprivation of liberty. The words “to the extent that” etc are perhaps unfortunate, but they cannot detract from what allowing the appeal necessarily entailed. These words were derived from para 11 of the Model Re X Order which had been published on the Court of Protection website and which practitioners had been encouraged to use. We were told by counsel that this form of words is not universally used. We understand that the form of words more often used is along the lines of: “P is deprived of his or her liberty as a result of arrangements in the Care Plan and these are lawful”. This is undoubtedly preferable to the earlier version.
  • Secondly, para 2 must also be read in the light of the consequential orders set out at paras 3 to 5 of the consent order. The reviews there provided for are clearly reviews of the kind contemplated where there is a deprivation of liberty.
  • It follows that the judge was wrong to hold that it had not been decided by this court that KW was being detained by the state within the terms of article 5. The appeal must, therefore, be allowed.

 

Was the consent order made ultra vires?

 

  • Was the judge right to say that the Court of Appeal took “a procedurally impermissible route” so that its decision was “ultra vires”? It is important that we comment on this statement in view of the general importance of the point and the fact that the judge’s comments have apparently given rise to considerable degree of public interest. We acknowledge that, despite these comments, the judge did say that the rule of law depends on first instance judges “complying scrupulously with decisions and orders from appellate courts”. And, as we have said, that is what he purported to do.
  • An order of any court is binding until it is set aside or varied. This is consistent with principles of finality and certainty which are necessary for the administration of justice: R (on the application of Lunn) v Governor of Moorland Prison [2006] EWCA Civ 700, [2006] 1 WLR 2870, at [22]; Serious Organised Crime Agency v O’Docherty (also known as Mark Eric Gibbons) and another [2013] EWCA Civ 518 at [69]. Such an order would still be binding even if there were doubt as to the court’s jurisdiction to make the order: M v Home Office [1993] UKHL 5; [1994] 1 AC 377 at 423; Isaacs v Robertson [1985] AC 97 at 101-103. It is futile and, in our view, inappropriate for a judge, who is called upon to give effect to an order of a higher court which is binding on him, to seek to undermine that order by complaining that it was ultra vires or wrong for any other reason.
  • In any event, the judge was wrong to say that the consent order was ultra vires because it was made by a procedurally impermissible route.
  • The issue turns on the true construction of para 6.4 of PD 52A. Rule 52.11 provides that the appeal court will allow an appeal where the decision of the lower court (a) was wrong or (b) was unjust because of a serious procedural or other irregularity in the proceedings of the lower court. It is concerned with the “hearing of appeals” which is done by way of a review or, in certain circumstances, a re-hearing. What is envisaged by rule 52.11 is a hearing which leads to a decision on the merits. To use the language of the first sentence of para 6.4 of the practice direction, this is what an appellate court normally does when allowing an appeal.
  • The use of the word “normally” in this sentence presages a departure from rule 52.11 in specified circumstances. The word “normally” followed by the use of the word “however” in the following sentence makes it clear that what follows specifies the circumstances in which the court may depart from the norm. The second sentence states that the court may set aside or vary the order of the lower court without determining the merits of the appeal, but only if (i) the parties consent and (ii) the court is satisfied that there are good and sufficient reasons for taking this course. That such a decision will be made on paper is clear from the heading to para 6.4 and the words of the third sentence. It is true that the second sentence speaks of setting aside or varying the order under appeal, whereas the first sentence (faithful to rule 52.11) speaks of allowing an appeal. But we do not consider that there is any significance in this difference of language. Rule 52.10 provides inter alia that the appeal court has power to “(2)(a) affirm, set aside or vary any order or judgment made or given by the lower court”. These words are picked up precisely in para 6.4 which sets out the powers that the appeal court has when allowing an appeal.
  • The appeal court, therefore, has a discretion to allow an appeal by consent on the papers without determining the merits at a hearing if it is satisfied that there are good and sufficient reasons for doing so. What are good and sufficient reasons? The answer will depend on the circumstances of the case, but we think that it would be helpful to provide some guidance. If the appeal court is satisfied that (i) the parties’ consent to the allowing of the appeal is based on apparently competent legal advice, and (ii) the parties advance plausible reasons to show that the decision of the lower court was wrong, it is likely to make an order allowing the appeal on the papers and without determining the merits. In such circumstances, it would involve unnecessary cost and delay to require the parties to attend a hearing to persuade the appeal court definitively on the point.
  • At para 14 of his judgment, the judge said that, where a merits based decision has been reached at first instance which all parties agree should be set aside on appeal, para 6.4 requires there to be a hearing and a judgment. He added: “The judge whose decision is being impugned is surely entitled to no less, and there is a plain need to expose error so that later legal confusion does not arise”. We disagree. Para 6.4 does not require a decision on the merits in every case where there has been a decision on the merits in the lower court. There is no reason to restrict in this way the wide discretion conferred by para 6.4 to allow an appeal by consent without a hearing followed by a decision on the merits. The words “good and sufficient reasons” are very wide. Further, we reject the notion that the judge whose decision is under appeal has any entitlement to a decision on the merits. In deciding whether to make a consent order without a decision on the merits, the appeal court is only concerned with the interests of the parties and the public interest. The interests of the judge are irrelevant.
  • We accept, however, that there will be cases where it may be in the interest of the parties or the public interest for the court to make a decision on the merits after a hearing even where the parties agree that the appeal should be allowed. Mostyn J referred to cases in the field of family law. For example, in Bokor-Ingram v Bokor-Ingram [2009] EWCA Civ 27, [2009] 2 FLR 922, the parties by consent asked the court to allow an appeal, set aside the order below and make a revised order. Thorpe LJ said:

 

“5. A short disposal might have followed but for our concerns that the judgment below had already been reported …..and was causing, or was likely to cause, difficulty for specialist practitioners and judges in this field of ancillary relief.

6. Accordingly, we decided to state shortly why we had reached a preliminary conclusion that the appeal, had it not been compromised, would in any event have been allowed.”

 

  • The fact that the decision of the lower court in that case was causing difficulty led the appellate court to conclude that there were not “good and sufficient reasons” for departing from the normal procedure of conducting a hearing and giving a decision on the merits.
  • An example from a different area of law is Halliburton Energy Services Inc v Smith International (North Sea) Ltd [2006] [EWCA] Civ 185. The lower court had held that a certain patent was invalid. Following the issue of appeal proceedings, the case was settled. The Court of Appeal was asked to make a consent order for the restoration of the patent to the register without deciding the merits of the appeal. The court decided that it had to hear the merits on the grounds that, for a patent to be restored to the register, what was needed was a decision reversing the order for revocation and showing that the previous decision was wrong. Here too (but for a very different reason), the appellate court considered that a decision on the merits was needed.

 

 

 

But you aren’t here for the technicalities. You want to see what happened with that boxing glove and the horseshoes.

 

 

  • Mostyn J’s first judgment did not raise any issue of law. It is true that his criticism of Cheshire West (what he describes in para 20 of the second judgment as his “jurisprudential analysis”) raised a question of law. But this question has been settled by the Supreme Court relatively recently. The judge’s analysis was, and could be, of no legal effect. It was irrelevant. Indeed, he purported to apply Cheshire West to the facts of the case. The basis of the appeal was that he had failed to apply Cheshire West to the facts properly. The public interest in the first judgment has focused on his criticisms of Cheshire West. Unlike Bokor-Ingram, the decision of the lower court in the present case should have caused no difficulty for practitioners or judges in the field. It was a decision on the facts which, with benefit of the advice of counsel and solicitors, the parties agreed was wrong. The Court of Appeal must have taken the view that the parties had advanced plausible reasons for contending that the judge’s decision was wrong, so that there were good and sufficient reasons for allowing the appeal without deciding the merits. In our view, it was clearly right to do so.
  • This litigation has an unfortunate history. The judge has twice made decisions which have been the subject of an appeal to this court. On both occasions, the parties have agreed that the appeal must be allowed. This has led to considerable unnecessary costs to the public purse and unnecessary use of court time. We regret to say that it is the judge’s tenacious adherence to his jurisprudential analysis leading to his conclusion that Cheshire West was wrongly decided that has been at the root of this. He says at para 26 of the second judgment that “the law is now in a state of serious confusion”. Even if Cheshire West is wrong, there is nothing confusing about it.
  • In our view, the judge’s passionate view that the legal analysis of the majority in Cheshire West is wrong is in danger of distorting his approach to these cases. In the light of the unfortunate history, we are of the opinion that the review should be conducted by a different judge, who need not be a high court judge,
  • For the reasons that we have given, this appeal is allowed.

 

 

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Missing boy and cancer treatment

Posted on October 8, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

The news that the parents of a child have taken him abroad for cancer treatment and that the Courts here are dealing with the case have echoes of the Ayesha King case which was such big news last year.  I wrote at that time about some of the legal issues about when a parent can decide to reject medical advice about their child

Parents deciding not to go ahead with cancer treatment

 

 

The Press reports about this particular child are in most of the newspapers today – here’s an example from the Guardian   (I picked up today that I always tend to use the Guardian for these, but they don’t sponsor me.Yet)

 

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/07/boy-needing-urgent-surgery-for-cancer-disappears-from-home-in-england

 

The judgment from Mostyn J is available, and people may want to read it

Re JM (a child) 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2015/2832.html

 

The boy is 10 years old. His parents are originally Polish but have lived here for two years. Very tragically, the boy JM has a very rare and aggressive cancer on the right hand side of his jaw. The medical advice is that it should be removed. If it is not removed soon, then JM will suffer an agonising and painful death.

 

 

  1. The operation would be lengthy, lasting up to 12 hours. There is a 2% risk of mortality or morbidity in the operation. It would involve harvesting skin and bone from his leg in order to rebuild the removed jaw bone. The result would be that J may be affected by lameness in future. He would need false teeth inserted in the lower right quadrant of his mouth. As he grows his face may develop a lop-sided appearance. He may suffer from chewing problems and need to be on a softish diet in the long term. Above all of this is the estimate that he has a 55% – 65% chance of survival for 5 years. Therefore there is a 35% to 45% chance of a fatal cancer re-emerging in that period. This might be at the same site or elsewhere in the body, most likely the lungs. All of these statistics are based on adult patients. It is not known whether they are equally applicable to children as the incidence of this disease in children is so rare that there is insufficient data on which to found empirical conclusions and predictions. There are only a handful of children in this country with this cancer. Dr X has treated five or six in 16 years of practice.
  2. I have seen photographs of a child who underwent this surgery. The facial swelling before the operation is very pronounced indeed. It is huge. At present J’s swelling is about a third of that size. The photographs post-operation show extensive skin grafts under the jaw. J may be able to escape skin grafts. The child in the photographs does not appear greatly disfigured, although the result of the operation is clearly noticeable.
  3. There is no doubt that the proposed surgery carries serious risks. However in the very clear opinion of Dr X they are risks which should be taken given the awful alternative. In her oral evidence she stated:

    “I would be hopeful of a young boy growing into a very able teenager. So far he has not had major organ toxicity and, depending on his engagement and motivation, I would have an expectation that he will be walking, running – Mr. Z has put in his statement not playing football, but I think that he means competitively. I mean, he will be able to kick a ball around. So I would expect, externally, that he will look and feel like most teenagers. He will have a scarred face and there is a worry that there will be asymmetry of his face as he grows older. He will be engaged with my team and the surgical team as he grows up, so he still will be medicalised, because he will be caught up in routine surveillance, which goes on for years; so we check out his lungs and do a clinical assessment every two months for the first year, every three months for the next year, every four months for the next year, every six months after that, and then annually, so he will be engaged in his medical outcome, so that makes him different, perhaps, from some of his peers, but, going back to my general clinics of those who survive, then some people find this whole process, actually, is a constructive outcome rather than a destructive one.

    Now, there are outliers of that. There are people who are very challenged by their cancer experience, who find it difficult to re-engage with their peers and who have ongoing psychological problems, but I would counter that with – so that may happen with other traumas in other walks of life. The only benefit to J, though, is that he will be in a very medicalised system that would hope to be able to support and manage problems that he brings to our attention. I would be very hopeful, if he survives, that his outlook is reasonable.”

 

 

The parents did not agree to the surgery, and nor did JM (though of course at aged 10 his views aren’t determinative)

  1. J’s parents do not consent to the operation. Neither does J. He has written to me to say “I don’t want the operation and there is not 100% [chance] to survive after the operation”. To Dr X he put it more graphically. He screamed out: “I don’t want to have it, because I don’t want to have a foot in my mouth”.
  2. J’s parents prefer to seek to treat him with Chinese medicine. The practitioner has not treated a cancer like this before and his technique is to treat the whole body to seek to promote overall wellness. The evidence before me is that even in China, where the use of Chinese medicine is widespread, surgery is the standard treatment for a cancer of this kind.
  3. J’s parents have explained to Dr X why they do not consent to the operation. She told me:

    “They are very frightened and fearful of what their son will blame them for when he grows up, that they worry that he will be so disfigured that he will blame them for allowing the operation to go ahead. That is one of their stated words. But they have not heard that the prospect of him growing up is completely remote, completely impossible, if they do not have surgery. …It is not that I have not tried to say that, and I have been very explicit, but there is a difference between hearing the words and processing the words. …That is one of their issues. I think that they have struggled with the consent process.”

 

The hospital can’t carry out the surgery if the parents don’t consent, unless the Court authorises it. Hence the hospital made an application to Court. The parents would have been able to attend that hearing and make their arguments, but did not attend.  Of course, in the Ayesha King case, the parents favoured a particular form of treatment proton beam therapy, which wasn’t available in the UK but was a form of treatment that was recommended in other countries for cancer treatment. Here, note that not even in China would this form of cancer be treated by “chinese alternative medicine”

 

The Judge weighed up the issues and the parents known objections and the child’s views very carefully, and came to the conclusion that the only option for JM was for this surgery to occur.  We now know that the child has been removed from the country – possibly to Poland, possibly to China.

You may be asking whether it really should be up to the Polish courts to decide, if the parents are from Poland and that’s where they are physically located there – if they disagreed with English doctors and decided to go back home, what’s it to do with the English Courts? Well, Mostyn J did explicitly deal with this

 

  1. It is possible that J is now in Poland. On 17 September 2015 when these proceedings were commenced J was habitually resident here in England. Therefore under Article 8(1) of Council Regulation (EC) No 2201/2003 of 27 November 2003 concerning jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in matrimonial matters and the matters of parental responsibility this court had jurisdiction over him at that time in relation to the matter of parental responsibility then in controversy namely his medical treatment. Since then it is possible (but unlikely) that with joint parental authority his habitual residence has changed to Poland. If so, it may be that courts here do not have jurisdiction to determine where or with whom he should live. As things stand at present however the evidence is that J remains habitually resident in this jurisdiction.
  2. However, there is no doubt that this court is seised of the specific issue of J’s medical treatment. Therefore under Article 19 the Polish court must decline jurisdiction in relation to this matter in favour of this court. I have explained that implementation of my primary decision will require a further hearing before me. If J is now permanently in Poland it may be that it would be appropriate for that aspect to be remitted for decision by the Polish court under Article 15

[It stays with the English Courts for now – if the parents have genuinely moved permanently to Poland, then an application can be made to transfer the case to the Polish Courts]

We will have to see how this story develops. And just as with the Ayesha King story, your heart absolutely goes out to the family who are in the middle of an absolute nightmare and just hope that a resolution can be reached.

 

[Mostyn J being Mostyn J, he still managed in the midst of all this to explain that if the imposition of treatment is on a 16 or 17 year old, the application ought properly to be made solely under the High Court’s inherent jurisdiction and not to a family Court under the Children Act and  hence

Note 1 It is for this reason I think that Ian McEwan’s excellent novel The Children Act (Jonathan Cape 2014), which is about a 17 year old Jehovah’s Witness refusing a blood transfusion, is in fact incorrectly titled.

 

which leads me to think that at either a book club or some cocktail party, someone has made the mistake of asking Mostyn J what he thinks about Ian McEwan’s novel and has wished twenty minutes later that they hadn’t.  I LOVE Mostyn J, in case you didn’t realise. His judgments always contain something extraordinary and marvellous.  I know that Ian McEwan read a LOT of judgments when he was researching his novel. If he still keeps up with them, he may be pleased to (a)  be in one, and (b) have received a positive book review.  I suspect he’ll be content with the title of “The Children Act” rather than “The Inherent Jurisdiction of the High Court”   ]

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Adoption and immigration

Posted on October 6, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

I was very surprised to see that Mostyn J’s decision not to award an adoption order to an 18 year old when he felt that the only tangible benefit was British citizenship was appealed. I wrote about his decision here

 

Adoption of an adult

 

and I had felt that he had got that absolutely spot on.

Nonetheless, the prospective adopter in that case did appeal, and the Court of Appeal judgment is here

 

FAS v Secretary of State for the Home Department and Bradford MBC 2015

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2015/951.html

 

I was even more suprised that the Court of Appeal decided that Mostyn J had been wrong in law.  You will see from the initial blog and judgment that Mostyn J had decided that the only benefit of making the adoption order for this person was to confer British citizenship on them, and that this was barred as a result of the House of Lords decision in Re B (a minor : Adoption Order :nationality) 1999

 

“The first is that the purpose of an adoption is, as section 12 of the Act says, to give parental responsibility for a child to the adopters. The court will therefore not make an adoption order when the adopters do not intend to exercise any parental responsibility but merely wish to assist the child to acquire a right of abode. This is what Cross J. in In re A. (An infant) [1963] 1 WLR 231, 236 called an “accommodation” adoption. The second proposition is that the court will rarely make an adoption order when it would confer no benefits upon the child during its childhood but give it a right of abode for the rest of its life. In such a case there are no welfare benefits during childhood to constitute the “first consideration.” The court is in effect being asked to use adoption to confer citizenship prospectively upon an adult. This is a power which Parliament has entrusted to the Home Secretary and the courts are reluctant to trespass upon the area of his authority.”

 

The appeal here was on the basis that as the 1999 decision of the House of Lords predated the 2002 Adoption and Children Act, AND that the Act moved the test from ‘the welfare of the child’ to ‘the welfare of the child throughout the child’s life’ that in effect Parliament HAD given the power to the Court to take impact of British citizenship into account.

The Secretary of State was an interested party to the proceedings, because obviously if the law is going to move to say that immigration status is a relevant consideration in making an adoption order that opens some doors that the Secretary of State might prefer remained closed.

 

Nonetheless, the Court of Appeal held that Mostyn J was wrong in law and that those doors ARE open

 

  1. I should explain why I consider that the judge has erred in his interpretation of section 1(2) of the 2002 Act. In my view, the natural meaning of the language used in section 1(2) requires regard to be had to the welfare interests of the child in question as they may be affected “throughout his life” – that is to say, not merely as they may be affected during his childhood, as was the test under section 6 of the 1976 Act. As a matter of language, there is no limitation as regards the nature of the child’s welfare interests which should be brought into account in this way, and none can be spelled out of the context. Given that it is readily possible to envisage things that might be done in relation to a child which may profoundly affect him for good or ill in the part of his life once he ceases to be a child (e.g. whether and how he is educated), it would be arbitrary to try to read down section 1(2) to limit its effect to purely emotional matters in the way that the judge sought to do. The wide ambit of the matters which may be relevant to assessing what promotes the child’s welfare contemplated by section 1(4), as indicated by its opening words (“… among others …”), also supports an interpretation which gives the words in section 1(2) their natural meaning.
  3. I do not think that section 1(4)(c) supports the judge’s narrow interpretation of the phrase “throughout his life” in section 1(2). If anything, it seems to me to point in the other direction. The phrase obviously bears its natural linguistic meaning in section 1(4)(c), meaning that the factor identified has to be brought into account by reference to the effects over the entirety of the child’s life. It would be very odd to give the same phrase a different, more restricted meaning when it is used in section 1(2). There is nothing in section 1(2) to suggest that the phrase only applies in relation to some (or only one), rather than all of the factors which might be found to be relevant to the welfare of a child.
  4. In my view, the reasoning of Lord Hoffmann in his speech in Re B (with which the other members of the appellate committee agreed) supports an interpretation of section 1(2) of the 2002 Act in accordance with the natural meaning of the words used in that provision. The case concerned an application by grandparents under section 6 of the 1976 Act to adopt their grandchild, T, who had only two years of minority remaining, to allow her to acquire British citizenship and avoid deportation, so that she could continue living with them in the UK and continue to attend school here: see p. 140B-D. The judge at first instance made an adoption order, even though the Home Office argued that this would be contrary to immigration policy, on the basis that he could not ignore these welfare benefits to T merely because they were dependent on the acquisition of a right of abode as a citizen: p. 140F-H. The order was set aside by the Court of Appeal on the grounds that in applying section 6 the court should ignore benefits which would result solely from a change in immigration status: pp. 140H-141C. The House of Lords held that this was contrary to the express terms of section 6 and restored the order made at first instance.
  5. Lord Hoffmann held that on the language used in section 6 the court could not ignore the considerable benefits which would have accrued to T during the remainder of her childhood:

    “Section 6 requires the judge to have regard to ‘all the circumstances’ and to treat the welfare of the child ‘throughout his childhood’ as the first consideration. I do not see how, consistently with this language, the court could simply have ignored the considerable benefits which would have accrued to T during the remainder of her childhood. That the order would enable her to enjoy these benefits was a fact which the court had to take into account. No doubt the views of the Home Office on immigration policy were also a circumstance which the court was entitled to take into account, although it is not easy to see what weight they could be given. Parliament has not provided, as I suppose it might have done, that the adoption of a non–British child should require the consent of the Home Secretary. On the contrary, it has provided that the making of an adoption order automatically takes the child out of the reach of the Home Secretary’s powers of immigration control. The decision whether to make such an order is entirely one for the judge in accordance with the provisions of s 6 . In cases in which it appears to the judge that adoption would confer real benefits upon the child during its childhood, it is very unlikely that general considerations of ‘maintaining an effective and consistent immigration policy’ could justify the refusal of an order. The two kinds of consideration are hardly commensurable so as to be capable of being weighed in the balance against each other” (p. 141C-F)

  6. The effect of this reasoning is that, in respect of the period in which the child’s interests were to be treated as a first consideration (i.e. “throughout his childhood”, according to the terms of section 6), the interests of the child (including material welfare benefits he would derive as a result of being granted British citizenship) would almost invariably have to be given priority as against the state’s interest in maintaining effective immigration controls. Lord Hoffmann contrasted the position in relation to benefits which would accrue after childhood (i.e. after the period in respect of which the child’s interests were to be treated as a first consideration according to section 6) at p. 142D-F, as follows:

    “I think it is wrong to exclude from consideration any circumstances which would follow from the adoption, whether they are matters which will occur during childhood or afterwards. This, as I have said, would be contrary to the terms of s. 6. Such benefits may include a right of abode or a possibility of succession. But benefits which will accrue only after the end of childhood are not welfare benefits during childhood to which first consideration must be given. And if a right of abode will be of benefit only when the child becomes an adult, that benefit will ordinarily have to give way to the public policy of not usurping the Home Secretary’s discretion. It is perhaps a curious feature of this case that if the Home Office had been willing to allow Ms B to remain in this country for the 2 years during which a residence order was in force, the case for an adoption, conferring a right of abode for life, would have been very much weaker. It would not have given Ms B any benefits during her childhood which she would not have been able to enjoy anyway.”

  7. As Lord Hoffmann said at p. 141H-142A, the approach to be adopted under section 6 where the benefits from conferral of citizenship would accrue after the childhood of the adopted person has ended was as follows:

    “… the court will rarely make an adoption order when it would confer no benefits upon the child during its childhood but give it a right of abode for the rest of its life. In such a case there are no welfare benefits during childhood to constitute the ‘first consideration’. The court is in effect being asked to use adoption to confer citizenship prospectively upon an adult. This is a power which Parliament has entrusted to the Home Secretary and the courts are reluctant to trespass upon the area of his authority.”

  8. Thus, in relation to benefits for the child which would only accrue in the period after that in which the child’s interests were to be treated as a first consideration, as a matter of interpretation of section 6 there was far greater scope for the state’s interest in maintaining effective immigration controls to be treated as outweighing those matters, and it would ordinarily do so.
  9. Lord Hoffmann’s reasoning in relation to both periods (i.e. benefits accruing during childhood, on the one hand, and benefits accruing after childhood, on the other) was tied to the language and structure of section 6, which gave paramountcy to the child’s interests in the first period but not in relation to the second. In relation to both periods, on the proper construction of section 6 in accordance with the ordinary meaning of the language used in it, Lord Hoffmann treated the practical benefits which would accrue from becoming a British citizen by operation of the 1981 Act as relevant matters to be brought into account in deciding whether to make an adoption order.
  10. On the present appeal Mr Greatorex, for the Secretary of State, submits that the change between section 6 of the 1976 Act and section 1(2) of the 2002 Act cannot be taken to indicate an intention on the part of Parliament to change the presumption in favour of giving greater weight to the state’s interest in maintaining immigration controls with respect to benefits accruing after childhood which had been identified in Re B in relation to section 6. I cannot accept this submission.
  11. Parliament has made a deliberate change in section 1(2) in specifying the period in relation to which the impacts (both positive and negative) of adoption for a child should be brought into account for the purpose of determining what is for the welfare of the child as being “throughout his life”, by contrast with the more limited period specified in section 6 of the 1976 Act (“throughout his childhood”). Apart from this change, the basic structure of section 1(2) remains the same as for section 6, namely that in relation to assessment by reference to the relevant period the child’s interests are treated as paramount or a first consideration and that all practical benefits and disbenefits for the child (including those which would accrue as a result of any automatic conferral of citizenship under section 1(5) of the 1981 Act) are treated as relevant matters. Like section 6 of the 1976 Act, section 1(2) of the 2002 Act cannot be construed as containing any artificial limitation on what types of benefit are capable of counting as a relevant matter when considering whether an adoption order should be made. Therefore, in my view, the points made by Lord Hoffmann in Re B by reference to the then relevant period under section 6 for bringing benefits into account (during childhood) at p. 141C-F, set out above, apply with similar effect in relation to the new relevant period under section 1(2) (throughout the child’s life).
  12. The result of this is that if, after taking account of the practical benefits of adoption for a child throughout his life, it can be seen that it best promotes the child’s welfare that he be adopted by a British citizen so as automatically to acquire British citizenship under section 1(5) of the 1981 Act, the court should ordinarily make the adoption order which is sought. Just as for the first of the periods considered by Lord Hoffmann in the context of applying section 6 of the 1976 Act in Re B, the state’s interest in maintaining effective immigration controls will have very little significance. It will not be appropriate for a court to refuse to make the order as some sort of indirect means of reinforcing immigration controls.
  13. I can readily see that the Secretary of State for the Home Department might be concerned at this result. But if she wishes the courts to have the ability to give greater weight to considerations of immigration policy in the context of deciding whether an adoption order should be made, she will need to persuade Parliament to change section 1 of the 2002 Act to allow that to happen.

 

 

So, having decided that the legal basis for Mostyn J to refuse to make the adoption order was wrong in law, the Court of Appeal surely then make the adoption order?  Well, no, because it turns out that as an 18 year old, simply making the adoption order would NOT confer British citizenship on the young man. And as that was the only tangible benefit identified by Mostyn J, there would be no benefit in making the order, and one can’t make such an order without being satisfied that it is better than making no order.

29…the judge erred in making the assumption he did that if he made an adoption order the effect of section 1(5) of the 1981 Act would be that MW would automatically acquire British citizenship. When the matter was before the judge, MW was already aged 18 and hence was no longer a “minor” as defined for the purposes of the 1981 Act. Therefore, if an adoption order had been made it would not have had the effect of automatically conferring British citizenship on MW. Once this is appreciated, the only benefit in terms of the welfare of MW associated with adoption identified by the judge drops out of the picture. There is no good reason to warrant the making of an adoption order in this case, and it is on this basis – different from the reasoning of the judge – that the appeal must be dismissed.

  1. Mr Rudd, for FAS, sought to argue that even though MW would not automatically become a British citizen if an adoption order were made, nonetheless it would greatly assist him in making an application for leave to remain in reliance on his rights to respect for his private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998 if the court had recognised his family connection with FAS by making the adoption order, and that this should be treated as a factor indicating that the making of such an order would promote his welfare. If MW obtained discretionary leave to remain, and such leave were sustained over some years, he might become a British citizen by that route.
  2. In my judgment this argument is unsustainable. Such family and private life as MW has established in the UK by living with FAS was formed at a time when it was known that he had only a very limited right to remain in the UK as a visitor for a few weeks, and hence was precarious. Any adoption order would be made after MW became an unlawful over-stayer and was known to be such. On the ordinary principles applicable under Article 8, in a case affected by precariousness of this kind it is only in exceptional circumstances that a right to remain could be established on the basis of private or family life (see e.g. R (Agyarko) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWCA Civ 440 at [28]), and there are none here. MW has no prospect of being granted leave to remain on the basis of Article 8 in exercise of the Secretary of State’s discretionary immigration powers, so this factor cannot justify the making of an adoption order in relation to MW.

 

 

The Court of Appeal thus achieving the unusual outcome of sending every single person in the Court room away being deeply unhappy about what was decided. Absolutely nobody would have been happy or even content with this.

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Taking forty thousand pounds in cash to Pizza Express

Posted on June 18, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

I mean, I know it is a tad more expensive than other pizza restaurants, and yes those doughballs ARE tempting, but I don’t think you need to go with that much cash in your back pocket.

Kaur v Randhawa 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2015/1592.html

This is an ancillary relief case in which the Ex Wife (who we’ll call Wife) was making applications for the Ex-Husband (who we’ll call Husband) to make good on the payment that he had been ordered to pay her in the final order of their divorce settlement. He had been ordered to pay her £80,000.

The Husband had a retort to this, which is that he had met with his Wife months earlier and agreed to pay her forty thousand pounds in cash, as a full and final settlement.  (It isn’t wonderfully clear why she’d agree to take £40,000 when a Court had just ordered that she would get £80,000, and the argument that it was ‘so that she wouldn’t lose her benefits’ isn’t that convincing)

The Husband’s case is that he met with the Wife in Pizza Express  (in Slough) and there handed her £40,000 in notes. Assuming that they were in £50 notes, that’s 800 notes.  One fifty pound note weighs 1.1 grams, so 40k is 800 grams or 1.75 pounds for the more experienced reader.

If you piled up £40k in fifty pound notes, it is about ten inches high.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say that even in Slough, where people routinely light their Romeo y Julietta cigars with crisp fifty pound notes, a ten inch thick pile of banknotes is going to attract some attention.

 

[I’m grateful to this website for allowing me to calculate and visualise just what £40,000 in cash might look like

http://www.reviewmylife.co.uk/blog/2010/05/09/what-does-one-million-pounds-look-like/ ]

 

 

One might imagine that if you were handing over £40,000 in cash, in full and final settlement of an £80k debt, you’d want to get some proof of that.

 

7. the husband says that in December 2013 he met the wife (and their child) at a Pizza Express in Slough where he paid her £40,000 in cash she having earlier agreed with him to accept this sum in satisfaction of her entitlement under the order. He says she agreed to accept this lesser sum in cash so that her receipt of benefits would not be disturbed. She agreed that her “charge” over the property would be lifted on payment of the £40,000.

  1. The wife flatly denies this. She says that the last time she met the husband was in 2011.
  2. The husband says that he borrowed the £40,000 from his brother. It was in £50 notes in packets of £2,500 – 16 packets in all. He says his brother came with him as well as another person who would act as a witness. He says that he took photos on his phone of him handing over the money but unfortunately he has since lost the phone. He says that his brother told him to get a receipt but he did not do so, as he trusted his wife. He said he had Facebook messages which would prove that the wife received the money.
  3. The brother says that he had the £40,000 in his safe. Alternatively he may have got it out via a casino. At an earlier hearing he had explained to me that “whenever we need cash, yes, I often go to a casino and take out the money there because its very lot easier to take it out”. He says he accompanied the husband to Slough with the cash. He advised the husband to get a receipt. He did not see the husband hand over the money. He did see the wife walking past in the street. The husband did not mention taking photographs. He could not remember if they brought a third person with them; they might have done.
  4. These stories, which were given in witness statements, were repeated from the witness box on oath.

 

Just to pull that together, the Husband got £40k in fifty pound notes, in sixteen separate bundles, and he got this from his brother, who got it from a safe, or from a casino. And they didn’t get a receipt. And he took photos, but those photos were on his phone, which is now lost. And he took a witness but can’t produce that witness.

 

One would expect that if the Wife was being handed a ten inch pile of fifty pound notes in Pizza Express that their waiter  “Hi, I’m Russell and I’ll be your waiter tonight” was lingering around and being particularly attentive in the hope of a really good tip.  I would have tried to track him down, I bet he would have remembered it either way.

Do you think Mostyn J went for this plausible account?

I have no hesitation in rejecting the evidence of the husband and his brother. I am certain it is false. Not only is it implausible in the extreme but it is not corroborated by contemporaneous documentary evidence or subsequent events. The husband has not produced any evidence from the alleged witness. His printouts of his Facebook account show no admissions from the wife (although the husband says that those were in audio clips which are referred to in the printouts.) The brother’s bank account does not show £40,000 taken from a casino at that time. It shows over four days in December 2013 £35,000 paid into a casino and £50,000 paid out, a net withdrawal of £15,000. Perhaps most significantly on 12 February 2014 in a conversation with the wife’s solicitor the husband said he “was not going to comply with the order”. In that conversation, as recorded in the attendance note, the husband did not say that two months earlier he had paid the wife £40,000 in cash which she had accepted in full satisfaction of her entitlement under the order. It is inconceivable that he would not have mentioned this if it had in fact happened.

 

If you ARE going to claim that you paid your wife 40 grand in used fifties, but that you can’t prove it in any way, it is probably NOT a good idea to tell her solicitor two months after the alleged transaction  when they ask you for the money  that you aren’t going to pay it, rather than “I have already paid her it”

 

Not only did Mostyn J not believe the Husband and make orders that the proper sum of money owed to the Wife would have to be paid, but he ruled that the Husband should pay the Wife’s legal costs at an indemnity rate (i.e as though her firm were charging private client rates rather than legal aid)and his Brother should have their evidence considered by the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider whether they should face trial for perjury.

 

 

 

  1. If an inter partes order for indemnity costs were made against the brother and the husband on a joint and several basis then the wife’s solicitors would be entitled to relinquish the legal aid certificate and be paid on a private basis. This is perfectly acceptable; indeed given the very low rates of pay by the agency legal aid firms depend on such orders for their survival.
  2. In my judgment the disgraceful conduct of the husband and the brother well justify an order for indemnity costs. The freezing order will remain in place until the balance of the costs award has been ascertained and paid. Obviously the freezing order is varied to permit the third party debt order to be executed.
  3. I direct that this judgment and the court bundle be sent to the DPP for her to consider whether proceedings for perjury should be brought against the husband and the brother.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“I know it when I see it” – deprivation of liberty

Posted on June 11, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

Readers will know that I don’t always agree with Mostyn J on issues of deprivation of liberty, but I think that he makes some very powerful points in this case and he makes them well.

 

Bournemouth Borough Council v PS 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2015/39.html

It involves a 28 year old, who the Court is naming “Ben”  (not his real name) who is on the autistic spectrum and has learning difficulties. The Local Authority who are providing him with care, asked the Court to make a ruling as to (a) whether the care package they were providing amounted to a deprivation of liberty and (b) whether if so, the Court would declare that this was in his best interests.

 

Firstly, Mostyn J wanted to ensure that all of the savings that Ben had accrued during his life by living frugally were not immediately eaten up by lawyers, since he would have to pay for a lawyer if represented through the Official Solicitor.  Mostyn J put different arrangements in place to ensure that Ben’s voice was heard, without draining his savings.  I applaud him for that, and it is a shame, that as he says, this may be one of the last times that this clever solution is useable.

  1. By virtue of COP Rule 2007 rule 141(1), as presently in force, Ben, as a party lacking capacity, is required to have a litigation friend. By virtue of great frugality Ben has accumulated appreciable savings from his benefits. It was foreseeable that were Ben to have a litigation friend who instructed solicitors and counsel, his savings would soon be consumed in legal costs. In my own order of 17 March 2015 I caused a recital to be inserted recording my concern that his means should not be eroded by legal costs. That same order recorded that Ben would be referred to the IMCA service for the appointment of an IMCA. That has duly happened and I have had the benefit of a helpful report from the IMCA, Katie Turner, where Ben’s wishes and feelings are clearly set out.
  2. In Re X (Deprivation of Liberty) No. 2 [2014] EWCOP 37 [2015] 2 FCR 28 Sir James Munby P at paras 12 – 15 and 19 explained that Article 6 of the 1950 Convention required that a protected person should be able to participate in the proceedings properly and satisfactorily with the opportunity of access to the court and of being heard, directly or indirectly, in the proceedings. However, these standards did not necessarily require that the protected person should be a party to the proceedings. There was no obstacle to the protected person participating in the proceedings without being a party.
  3. This ruling has been put on a statutory footing by a new rule 3A to the COP rules. This permits the protected person’s participation to be secured by the appointment of a non-legal representative. However this new rule does not take effect until 1 July 2015, some three weeks hence.
  4. In the circumstances, in what I suppose will be one of the last orders of its kind to be made, I directed that Ben be discharged as a party. I was wholly satisfied that his voice has been fully heard through the IMCA Katie Turner. Further, in relation to the question of deprivation of liberty, all relevant submissions have been fully put on both sides of the argument by counsel for the applicant and the first respondent.

 

One of the real hopes about Cheshire West when it went to the Supreme Court was that there would be a working definition of what ‘deprivation of liberty’ actually amounts to.  I didn’t like the Court of Appeal solution that it could be person specific  (i.e that a person with special needs can have less liberty and more restrictions to his liberty than an average person because his needs require it), but the Supreme Court’s acid-test is not proving much simpler than the old tangled case law.

The facts in this case which might have amounted to a deprivation of liberty were these:-

  1. There are no locks on the doors but there are sensors which would alert a staff member were he to seek to leave, although he has never tried to do so. Mr Morrison explained the situation as follows:

    “The property is such he is in theory able to leave his home on his own volition. Since he has lived at his bungalow he has never left of his own accord or verbally requested to leave without staff. However a door alarm is in place which would alert staff should Ben attempt to leave without staff attendance. If Ben were to leave the property without this having been arranged by staff they would quickly follow him, attempt to engage with him, and monitor him in the community. Ben requires one to one staff support at all times in the community. If he decided he didn’t want to return to his home, staff would firstly verbally encourage him to return, if this proved unsuccessful the Manager of Ben’s care agency would be contacted and they or another staff member would arrive and assist. If this proved unsuccessful further advice, support and attendance by Crisis Team and Social Services for crisis management would be sought and to consider whether a Mental Health Act assessment would be required. If this proved unsuccessful then consideration would be given to the attendance of the Police. Police attendance would be determined by the circumstances and if it is deemed his health and safety and that of others are at risk of harm. At all times staff would remain with Ben.”

  2. In his oral evidence Mr Morrison explained that if all attempts to persuade Ben to return home failed they would ask the police to exercise the powers under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983 to remove Ben to a place of safety. He also explained that consistently with a duty of common humanity if staff were out with Ben and he appeared to be about to step in front of a car they would prevent him from doing so. He stated in his witness statement:

    “Ben needs 1-1 staff support in the community as he lacks road and traffic awareness. Without staff support Ben would not take into account the traffic or road conditions at any given time. If Ben was unescorted in the community it is highly likely he would walk out into the road presenting a high risk of serious harm to him and potentially others. When Ben is escorted in the community he would be guided either verbally or physically and supported to cross a road and staff would intervene should he put himself at risk of significant harm.”

  3. He accepted under cross-examination that such an act of humanity could not amount to a deprivation of liberty, and I emphatically agree.
  4. In his witness statement Mr Morrison dwelt on one particular aspect of necessary supervision. He stated:

    “There is particular risk associated with Ben accessing public toilets in the community as the result of past incidents of Ben engaging in inappropriate sexual activity in public places including toilets. Ben has no understanding of the rights of other members of the public having access to public toilets safely and that any sexual activity in a toilet is illegal. Ben is supported by staff to access public toilets should he need to do so. … He is encouraged to use the locked cubicle of the disabled toilet and staff have a key to access should this be required. When Ben uses a male communal toilet the worker either remains outside the building or goes inside to support Ben. If Ben does not want to leave the toilet a male worker would enter the toilet and encourage him to leave. If a female worker was in attendance they would remain on site and the manager of the care agency would be called for assistance and attendance. A male worker or the intensive support team worker will arrive to support Ben. If this proved unsuccessful the Intensive support team would be called for specialist support and if unsuccessful then Police would be called.”

 

Remember that in deprivation of liberty, there’s a two stage test. Firstly, are the restrictions such as to amount to a deprivation of liberty? And secondly, if so, are those restrictions in the person’s interests?

I think it is really easy to conflate the two. It is really easy to look at this and say “of course he would be stopped if he tried to run into the road” and rather than answering it as a two stage question to simply combine the two, ending up with “someone with Ben’s difficulties would and should be stopped from running into the road, so no deprivation of liberty”  – but that’s a re-set to the Court of Appeal take on Cheshire West.

The comparison is not of Ben with other people with his difficulties and the liberty that they enjoy, but of Ben with other twenty-eight year olds, or Ben with other adults. Other adults are allowed to leave the place where they live, and are not going to be brought back by the police.  (unless their liberty is being deprived as a result of the criminal justice system, or secure accommodation, or the Mental Health Act, or a Deprivation of Liberty under the MCA).  You might consider it to be daft or irresponsible to give Ben the freedom to leave his home and go wherever he wants even if that’s in the middle of the night, but that’s why there’s the second limb – are the restrictions in his best interests?

Whether they are in his best interests or not, doesn’t stop the fact that the restrictions on his life amount to his liberty  being deprived, that’s a deprivation of liberty.

I think there’s also a blurring of whether deprivation of liberty is to be taken with a silent word ‘complete’ in there.  Few would argue that a man locked up in a prison cell, told when to eat and sleep and when he can exercise or go outside is a complete deprivation of liberty, and that what Ben is experiencing is not qualitively the same thing at all. But the Act doesn’t talk about ‘complete’ deprivation, and nor do the Supreme Court.

 

As Mostyn J says, the fuzziness around the edges of deprivation of liberty lead to applications of this kind being made, and as we saw at the outset, they don’t always make things better for Ben and people like him. He could have had all of his savings chewed up by a technical legal debate that he couldn’t care less about, because the chances are whether a Judge decides that his circumstances amount to a deprivation of liberty or not, the Judge is going to go on and say that the restrictions are in his best interests.

 

  1. In her lecture Lady Hale frankly stated that the decision of the Supreme Court of 19 March 2014 has had “alarming practical consequences”. I was told by Miss Davies that in the immediate aftermath of the decision the rate of suspected DOLs cases in this local authority rose by 1000% (it has recently reduced to 800%). This local authority is one of three in Dorset. Statistics from the Department of Health state that in the six month period immediately following the decision 55,000 DOLs applications were made, an eightfold increase on 2013-14 figures.
  2. The resource implications in terms of time and money are staggering. In the Tower Hamlets case I stated at para 60:

    “Notwithstanding the arrival of the streamlined procedure recently promulgated by the Court of Protection Practice Direction 10AA there will still be tens if not hundreds of thousands of such cases and hundreds of thousands if not millions of documents to be processed. The streamlined procedure itself requires the deployment of much man and womanpower in order to identify, monitor and process the cases. Plainly all this will cost huge sums, sums which I would respectfully suggest are better spent on the front line rather than on lawyers.”

  3. I do not criticise this local authority in the slightest for bringing this case. In the light of the decision of the Supreme Court local authorities have to err on the side of caution and bring every case, however borderline, before the court. For if they do not, and a case is later found to be one of deprivation of liberty, there may be heavy damages claims (and lawyers’ costs) to pay. I remain of the view that the matter needs to be urgently reconsidered by the Supreme Court.

Although I disagree with Mostyn J about the merits of returning to the Court of Appeal Cheshire West decision, I can’t argue with him on the underlined passage. This is not public money being well spent to make people’s lives better. This is a huge amount of money being expended to achieve very little.

 

Mostyn J’s view on the individual case is that the current circumstances do not amount to a deprivation of liberty and that it would only arise at the point where the police were asked to bring him back

 

I cannot say that I know that Ben is being detained by the state when I look at his position. Far from it. I agree with Mr Mullins that he is not. First, he is not under continuous supervision. He is afforded appreciable privacy. Second, he is free to leave. Were he to do so his carers would seek to persuade him to return but such persuasion would not cross the line into coercion. The deprivation of liberty line would only be crossed if and when the police exercised powers under the Mental Health Act. Were that to happen then a range of reviews and safeguards would become operative. But up to that point Ben is a free man. In my judgment, on the specific facts in play here, the acid test is not met. Ben is not living in a cage, gilded or otherwise.

Famously, a group of professionals working in the field were given case studies about various scenarios and asked to conclude whether each was, or was not, a deprivation of liberty and there was barely any consensus. Have things got better post Cheshire West, or are we now arguing relentlessly about ‘acid tests’ and ‘freedom to leave and ‘continuous supervision”?

 

What I like most about Mostyn J is that you never leave one of his judgments without having learned something new. There are not many people who would produce both poetry and an American case about hard core pornography to prove a point, but Mostyn J is one of them, and he has enriched my day by doing so.  I also believe that this case is now legal authority for both the elephant test and ‘if it looks like a duck’ and should you need to demonstrate those principles, you may pray this case in aid.   [The formulation of the duck principle is expressed in slightly different wording to the traditional use, so beware of a pedant challenging you]

 

  1. The continuing legal controversy shows how difficult it is to pin down a definition of what is a deprivation of liberty (i.e. detention by the state) as opposed to a restriction on movement or nothing beyond humane and empathetic care. It has been said on a number of occasions by the Strasbourg Court that the difference is merely one of degree or intensity, and not one of nature or substance (see, for example, Stanev v Bulgaria (2012) 55 EHRR 22 at para 115). Ultimately I think that whether a factual situation does or does not satisfy the acid test is likely to be determined by the “I know it when I see it” legal technique. That received its most famous expression from Justice Potter Stewart in the US Supreme Court in Jacobellis v Ohio (1964) 378 U.S. 184, an obscenity case, where he stated “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [of hard-core pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.” The technique has been expressed in zoological metaphor. In Cadogan Estates Ltd v Morris [1998] EWCA Civ 1671, a case about a claim for a new lease, Stuart-Smith LJ stated at para 17 “this seems to me to be an application of the well known elephant test. It is difficult to describe, but you know it when you see it”. Another expression is the well known aphorism attributed to the American poet James Whitcomb Riley who wrote “when I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck”. The case of Stanev was perfectly obviously one of rigorous state detention. In describing Mr Stanev’s circumstances the court referred to the “severity of the regime”. The complainant was held in dire conditions in a remote compound enclosed by a high metal fence. Apart from the administration of medication, no therapeutic activities were organised for residents, who led passive, monotonous lives. The complainant needed prior permission to leave the compound, even to visit the nearby village. He had been denied permission to travel on many occasions by the management. In accordance with a practice with no legal basis, residents who left the premises for longer than the authorised period were treated as fugitives and were searched for by the police. The complainant had in fact been arrested by the police on one occasion.
  2. One does not need to reach for many legal tomes to realise that this was unquestionably a case of deprivation of liberty. The Strasbourg court knew it when it saw it.
  3. In KC v Poland [2014] ECHR 1322 a 72 year old widow, under the apparent care of a social guardian, who had previously been declared to be partially incapacitated, was placed by a court, against her wishes, in a care home on account of chronic schizophrenia and a disorder of the central nervous system. She could ask for permission to leave the care home on her own during the day. When she asked for the court order to be varied to allow her to leave for one hour a day to go to the shops and to allow her to stay in her room all day, this request was declined by the court on the basis that it was provided for by the internal regulations of the care home. The Polish government’s position was that she had never requested permission to leave on her own even for a short period of time. However, and unsurprisingly, the government did not contest that she had been deprived of her liberty under Article 5. It knew it when it saw it. The court, inevitably, agreed. At para 51 it stated:

    “In the present case, although the applicant has been declared only partially incapacitated and although the Government submitted that she could ask to leave the social care home on her own during the day, they did not contest that she had been deprived of her liberty. She was compulsory placed in the social care home, against her will, on the basis of a court decision. Therefore, the responsibility of the authorities for the situation complained of is engaged.”

  4. In my opinion that was a very obvious case of state detention

 

The problem with “I know it when I see it” is that it is going to be completely subjective. As Mostyn J pointed out, if a Local Authority worker or lawyer decides “I know it when I see it” and this isn’t a Deprivation of Liberty, and someone later challenges that it was and was an unlawful one, that then hangs on what a Judge will decide when he or she runs the “I know it when I see it” exercise. If they disagree with the LA, financial consequences will rack up. It is risk and uncertainty, and who wants risk and uncertainty?  (other than casinos and fans of Game of Thrones)

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Mostyn Powers

Posted on March 16, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

Long-term readers will have picked up by now that there’s always something of value in a judgment by Mostyn J.  He follows that Raymond Chandler dictum of putting a diamond on every page.

 

This one follows his earlier decision (which many of us questioned at the time) that he wasn’t bound by the Supreme Court in Cheshire West and went with the principle that had been rejected by them to decide that a person wasn’t being deprived of their liberty

Have we just given up on the notion of the Supreme Court being supreme?

In that case, Mostyn J declared that he was bound by the decision of the Supreme Court in Cheshire West, though making it plain that he didn’t agree with it, but then didn’t follow it, distinguishing his case on its facts. He felt that it was something that the Supreme Court should look at again, and invited an appeal.

 

This is the follow-up judgment after the Court of Appeal reached the entirely unexpected conclusion that the Supreme Court had already decided that the FACT of whether a person was deprived of their liberty didn’t take into account whether their disabilities made that necessary, that’s for the second stage as to whether the Court should authorise that deprivation of liberty.

Readers may recall a previous occasion on which Mostyn J didn’t take it entirely in his stride when the Court of Appeal overruled him and he disagreed with their view.  He drops the “with the profoundest of respect” bomb during the judgment where he has to deal with the case again.

With the profoundest respect

 

So, given that scenario, one is following the firework code when reading Mostyn J’s decision.

Rochdale v KW 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2015/13.html

 

Firstly, here’s what happened in  the Court of Appeal  (I haven’t seen this reported yet, but given that the original Rochdale v KW 2014 unleashed the contents of a cattery into a pigeon coop, it is important)

The appeal was fixed for a full oral hearing on 4 or 5 February 2015. However, on 30 January 2015 the Court of Appeal allowed the appeal against my decision by consent and without a hearing purportedly pursuant to the terms of CPR PD52A para 6.4. Its order provided as follows:

“UPON reading the appeal bundle filed with the court.

AND UPON the Respondent confirming that it does not intend to oppose the appeal

IT IS ORDERED that:

1. This appeal is allowed.

2. For the review period as defined below, KW is to reside and receive care at home pursuant to arrangements made by Rochdale Council and set out in the Care Plan; and to the extent that the restrictions in place pursuant to the Care Plan are a deprivation of KW’s liberty, such deprivation of KW’s liberty is hereby authorised.

3. If a change or changes to the Care Plan that render it more restrictive have as a matter of urgent necessity been implemented Rochdale Council must apply to the Court of Protection for an urgent review of this order on the first available date after the implementation of any such changes.

4. If a change or changes to the Care Plan that render it more restrictive are proposed (but are not required as a matter of urgent necessity) Rochdale Council must apply to the Court of Protection for review of this order before any such changes are made.

5. In any event. Rochdale Council must make an application to the Court no less than one month before the expiry the review period as defined below for a review of this order if at that time the Care Plan still applies to KW. Such application shall be made in accordance with any Rules and Practice Directions in effect at the date of the application being filed or, if not otherwise specified, on form COPDOL10.

6. Any review hearing shall be conducted as a consideration of the papers unless any party requests an oral hearing or the Court decides that an oral hearing is required.

7. “The review period” shall mean 12 months from the date on which this order was made or, if an application for review has been filed at Court before that date, until determination of such review application.

8. Nothing shall published that will reveal the identify of the Appellant who shall continue to be referred to as “KW” until further order pursuant to section 12 of the Administration of Justice Act 1960.

9. There shall no order for costs between the parties.

10. There shall be a detailed assessment of KW’s public funding costs.”

Attached to the order was a piece of narrative, prepared by counsel for the appellant, which provided as follows:

“Statement of reasons for allowing the appeal as required pursuant to CPR, PD52A at para 6.4.

The reason for inviting the Court of Appeal to allow the appeal by consent is that the learned judge erred in law in holding that there was not a deprivation of liberty. He was bound by the decision of the Supreme Court in P (by his litigation friend the Official Solicitor) v Cheshire West and Chester Council & ors [2014] UKSC 19; [2014] AC 986 (“Cheshire West“) to the effect that a person is deprived of their liberty in circumstances in which they are placed by the State in a limited place from which they are not free to leave. It is accepted by both parties on facts which are agreed that this was the position in the case of KW and that the learned judge also erred in holding that KW might soon not have the ability to walk or leave home on her own.”

That’s right, everyone involved in the case (except Mostyn J) wrote to the Court of Appeal saying that they thought Mostyn J had got it wrong and agreeing that there HAD been a deprivation of liberty and that the Court should authorise it.

The case then came back before Mostyn J, hence this judgment and hence this piece. I would imagine that the advocates did not have the most peaceful of sleep the night before that particular hearing.

Mostyn J did not take this terribly well.

He questioned whether the Court of Appeal had jurisdiction to make such a decision on a consent basis without actually hearing from the parties.  He has a point here, I think, it must be very unusual. Even in cases where everyone is agreed that a mistake has been made, there is usually a judgment given.

  1. CPR 52.11(3) provides:

    “The appeal court will allow an appeal where the decision of the lower court was –

    (a) wrong; or

    (b) unjust because of a serious procedural or other irregularity in the proceedings in the lower court.”

  2. CPR PD52A para 6.4 provides for a very limited derogation from this simple and necessary rule. It is headed “SECTION VI – DISPOSING OF APPLICATIONS AND APPEALS BY CONSENT” and provides:

    “Allowing unopposed appeals or applications on paper

    6.4 The appeal court will not normally make an order allowing an appeal unless satisfied that the decision of the lower court was wrong or unjust because of a serious procedural or other irregularity. The appeal court may, however, set aside or vary the order of the lower court by consent and without determining the merits of the appeal if it is satisfied that there are good and sufficient reasons for so doing. Where the appeal court is requested by all parties to allow an application or an appeal the court may consider the request on the papers. The request should set out the relevant history of the proceedings and the matters relied on as justifying the order and be accompanied by a draft order.”

  3. It can be seen that the strict terms of CPR 52.11(3) are modified by the deployment of the adverb “normally” in the first sentence. In the second sentence the sole exception to the primary rule is spelt out. An appeal may be allowed by consent “without determining the merits of the appeal if it is satisfied that there are good and sufficient reasons for so doing”. Therefore it follows that this procedure, which involves a determination on the papers and without an oral hearing, cannot be used to determine an appeal on the merits.
  4. One can see the need for this provision. Following the first instance decision there may have been a change in the law deriving from legislation or a binding decision of a higher court. In such a case it would be necessary to set aside the original decision without a determination on the merits. Similarly, a procedural order may require to be set aside without a determination on the merits because of a change of circumstances or a mistake. It is impossible to see however how this procedure could be used to overthrow on the merits the central basis of a first instance decision particularly where that involved a clear statement of legal principle in relation to the facts as found.
  5. My limited researches in the field of family law reveal that where a merits based decision has been reached at first instance, which all parties agree should be set aside on appeal, then there is a hearing and a judgment. This is consistent with the only reasonable interpretation of para 6.4. The judge whose decision is being impugned is surely entitled to no less, and there is a plain need to expose error so that later legal confusion does not arise. Thus in Bokor-Ingram v Bokor-Ingram [2009] EWCA Civ 412 Thorpe LJ held as follows:

    “1. In a judgement handed down on 23 June 2008, Charles J dismissed an application brought by the wife to set aside a consent order reached on 20 July 2006 at an FDR appointment determining her claims for ancillary relief for herself and the two children of the family.

    2. Charles J dismissed the wife’s application and refused her permission to appeal. Her application for permission was renewed to this court by a Notice of Appeal dated 7 August 2008. Wilson LJ granted permission to appeal on 30 October 2008, and that appeal was listed for hearing today and tomorrow, 4 and 5 March 2009.

    3. At the outset Mr Martin Pointer QC and Mr Jonathan Cohen QC, representing respectively the wife and the husband, informed the court that the parties had reached a comprehensive agreement to settle not only the appeal but also pending or prospective applications for the variation of the order of 20 July 2006.

    4. The agreement reached between the parties invited the court to allow the appeal, set aside the order of 20 July 2006, and to make revised orders on the wife’s applications.

    5. A short disposal might have followed but for our concern that the judgment below had already been reported at [2008] 2 FCR 527 and at [2009] 1 FLR 2001 and was causing, or was likely to cause, difficulty for specialist practitioners and judges in this field of ancillary relief.”

    Thorpe LJ then went on to give a full judgment explaining why Charles J had fallen into error.

  6. Similarly, in the recent decision of Re S-W (Children) [2015] EWCA Civ 27 it was recorded at para 4 that:

    “Neither Liverpool City Council nor the children’s guardian seeks to uphold the orders made. All parties are therefore agreed that the appeal should be allowed and that the matter should be remitted to Her Honour Judge de Haas QC, the Designated Family Judge for Liverpool.”

  7. Three full judgments followed explaining why Judge Dodds had fallen into error. Again, this was the least he could have expected and a reasoned judgment would have the effect of preventing similar mistakes in the future.
  8. The reason why in neither of these cases the Court of Appeal exercised its powers to deal with the appeal on paper, without a hearing, and by consent pursuant to para 6.4 was that in each instance it involved a determination on the merits that the judge was wrong. Therefore in each case the circumstances fell outside para 6.4.
  9. The researches of counsel, undertaken after argument was concluded before me but before this judgment was handed down, have not revealed any case where a fully reasoned decision has been overturned on the merits by consent and without a judgment. This is not surprising.

In this case the appeal was against para 6 of my order, which reflected the terms of my judgment, that the package of care provided to Katherine does not amount to a deprivation of liberty within the terms of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights. That was the centrally, if not the only, relevant component of my judgment. It was its very ratio decidendi. By para 1 of the Court of Appeal order the appeal is allowed. That is plainly a determination on the merits. It could not be anything else. But such a determination on the merits does not fall within para 6.4.

I do rather agree with Mostyn J here. Whilst I respectfully think that he was wrong at first instance, he was wrong in a way that several very senior Judges (including two members of the Supreme Court) have agreed with.  It would have been helpful to have this issue put to bed. I happen to think that the Supreme Court have already done it, but as there appears to be judicial doubt, better to have that cleared up.

 

I also think that even if one accepts that Mostyn J was wrong and that KW’s liberty HAD been deprived, it is then a leap for the parties to agree an order between themselves that the Court of Appeal authorise such deprivation as being in KW’s best interests when frankly that particular argument has not been fully ventilated and litigated because the trial Judge ruled that on the facts he did not consider that she HAD been deprived of her liberty.

 

Where does that leave KW then?

  1. Even though the Court of Appeal appears to have taken a procedurally impermissible route, the rule of law depends on first instance judges complying scrupulously with decisions and orders from appellate courts. And so I must here, even if I happen to think that the order of the Court of Appeal is ultra vires. The allowing of the appeal should be construed as setting aside para 6 of my order, even if it does not actually say so. But does the order replace it with a declaration that Katherine is being deprived of her liberty? It does not explicitly say so, which is highly surprising. Further, para 2 of the order is phrased in highly ambiguous language. It says “to the extent that the restrictions in place pursuant to the care plan are a deprivation of KW’s liberty, such deprivation of KW’s liberty is hereby authorised.” The use of this conditional language suggests to me that Court of Appeal has not actually decided that this is a situation of state detention. What they are saying that if it is then it is authorised. In my judgment para 2 of the order does not amount to a declaration that Katherine is being deprived of her liberty.
  2. It therefore seems to me that we are back to square one with no-one knowing whether Katherine is, or is not, being detained by the state within the terms of Article 5. That issue will have to be decided at the next review hearing whether it is held under paras 3, 4 or 5 of the Court of Appeal order. Pursuant to para 6 I now direct that any review hearing will be conducted by me at an oral hearing and on the basis of full fresh evidence concerning Katherine’s circumstances. Until then Katherine’s status must be regarded as being in limbo.
  3. For the avoidance of any doubt it is my finding that the hearing ordered by para 5 of the Court of Appeal order is not a review of a determined situation of state detention but is, rather, a hearing de novo to determine if one exists.

 

Mostyn J goes further – having said that there has NOT been a decision that KW is being deprived of her liberty and there would have to be a hearing if anyone invites the Court to make such a finding, he goes on to drop this remarkable bombshell

  1. Further, it is my ruling that a hearing under paras 3 or 4 can only be triggered if the restrictive changes proposed amount to bodily restraint comparable to that which obtained in P v Cheshire West and Chester Council. Any restrictions short of that will amount to no more than arrangements for her care in her own home and would not, consistently with my previous judgments, amount to state detention. Therefore, in such circumstances there would be nothing to review under paras 3 and 4.
  2. It will be apparent from what I have written above that in the absence of a reasoned judgment from the Court of Appeal explaining why I was wrong I maintain firmly the correctness of my jurisprudential analysis in my principal decision as augmented in my Tower Hamlets decision. In this difficult and sensitive area, where people are being looked after in their own homes at the state’s expense, the law is now in a state of serious confusion.

 

So we seem to be in a position where if you go before Mostyn J, Rochdale v KW 2014 is good law, but if you go before another Judge, it may not be considered that way. The Court of Appeal sanctioned an order which had the effect of overturning the decision in Rochdale, but Mostyn J has ruled that it did not actually rule on the principle or the interpretation of the law.

That’s not really the way that precedent works. There are quite a few precedents that I don’t agree with and where I think the law has got it wrong, but it is the law and has to be followed until it is overturned or refined.  You have to be able to pick up a piece of case law and know whether it is a precedent which others may follow or if it is not. (Yes, sometimes, like H&R or even Cheshire West at CoA stage, the precedent which everyone follows is later determined to be wrong, but we all knew that those cases were being appealed)

The legal status of the principle in Rochdale v KW 2014 is not at all clear to me any longer. Mostyn J makes a compelling argument here that it remains binding on any Judge who is less senior than a High Court Judge. Equally, we know that the orders made did not stand following an appeal to the Court of Appeal. Is it law, or isn’t it?

We can’t surely have law that applies if you are before X Judge but not before Y Judge.

 

[I hope that I’ve been plain that whilst I disagreed with Mostyn J’s original call, I think he was right that there was a sufficient element of doubt that the Court of Appeal ought to have properly considered it and ruled on it. This was a decision that did not only affect the parties, but had a degree of public interest. It should not have been carved up by the parties, even if I think they were correct that the Judge had fallen into error on thinking the case could be distinguished from the principles in Cheshire West]

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The LASPO safety net is a fig leaf

Posted on March 10, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

Oh, you’re going to like this one.

This decision from Mostyn J is quite involved, but significant. Even if you aren’t that interested in the very peculiar mechanics, what he had to say about LASPO (see title of the piece) is striking.

 

MG and JG v JF 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2015/564.html

 

To make it less alphabet soup, I’ll give people names (these are NOT their real names, I’ve made them up)

Jean Grey and Marie Grey were lesbian partners. They wanted to have a child and advertised for a man to provide gametes to make this happen. Jim Francis agreed to do this.

 

The child is born, and named John Fitzgerald Grey.

Jim Francis was having quite a lot of contact with little John, once or twice a month. This all changed when Marie Grey became pregnant with a second child (that donor thankfully isn’t involved in this case), and Marie and Jean stopped Jim’s contact.

 

Jim makes an application to court for contact. Jean and Marie learn that post LASPO they don’t qualify for legal aid. Jim on the other hand has some means and can pay privately.  [He could not be described as being wealthy – it is more comfortably middle class. His property is valued at £1.2 million and he earns £67,000 per year. Sufficient to pay his own legal fees – though probably not without a degree of wincing when he writes the cheques, but we are not in big money divorce territory here]

 

At some point, someone comes up with a cunning wheeze. An application can be made under Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989 for some of Jim’s capital to be released to the child, and those funds can be used to pay for Marie and Jean’s legal costs.

That sort of thing isn’t that unusual in big money divorce cases where one person holds all of the assets – the Court order that they release some of the disputed funds to the other party to cover their legal costs and when the money is all divvied up at the end, that can be taken into account.

 

But this is a contact application – there isn’t going to be a share out of money at the end.  And as we know, the law in children cases is that each side pays their own costs, unless one party has behaved terribly badly. No suggestion of that here.

So this is in a sense, an application that Jim Francis uses his own money to pay for the other side to fight his application, even though he has done nothing wrong.  Unusual.

 

Firstly then, why shouldn’t Marie and Jean represent themselves, as envisaged by LASPO?

In this case it is my firm view that it is impossible for MG and JG to be expected to represent themselves having regard to the factual and legal issues at large. There would be a gross inequality of arms, and arguably a violation of their rights under Articles 6 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 47 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. So even though it cannot be said that JF has behaved reprehensibly or unreasonably he is the only realistic source of costs funding, subject to whatever contribution MG and JG should make from their own very limited resources. Some may say (and have said) that this is grossly unjust; I myself refrain from comment.

 

[I’m not quite sure it is accurate that Mostyn J refrains from comment. He doesn’t make direct comment, but I think the next section gives you a pretty clear idea of his thinking]

 

We add to the complexity that Jean and MArie split up with a degree of acrimony, and that the case also involved disputed about whether the child should be vaccinated.

Mostyn J is scathing here about the changes and the lack of foresight in seeing that cases are inevitably going to emerge where a lack of legal aid causes huge difficulties and unfairness.  This is a breathtaking and masterful dissection of the disaster that LASPO has been for individuals.

 

  1. With very few changes the government’s proposals were enacted in LASPO. A safety net was included by section 10(3)(b) which gave the Director of the Legal Aid Agency the discretion to award legal aid where “it is appropriate to do so, in the particular circumstances of the case, having regard to any risk that failure to do so would be …a breach [of Convention or EU rights].” As the President explained in Q v Q (No. 2) [2014] EWFC 31 at paras 6 – 8 the Lord Chancellor issued guidance concerning section 10(3)(b) which stated that it should be confined to “rare” cases which are of the “highest priority”. But this guidance has been quashed as legally defective by Collins J in Gudanaviciene & Ors v Director of Legal Aid Casework & Anor [2014] EWHC 1840 (Admin). That decision is under appeal.
  2. As the President explained in Q v Q the number of annual cases where the safety net has been applied can be counted on the fingers of two hands. In the year to March 2014 there were 9. Indeed between December 2013 and March 2014 one solitary case was caught by the safety net. The President stated at para 14 “if the scheme is indeed working effectively, then it might be thought that the scheme is inadequate, for the proper demand is surely at a level very significantly greater than 8 or 9 cases a year.” Thus it would be perfectly reasonable to describe this “safety net” as a fig leaf. MG and JG have not applied for exceptional funding under section 10(3)(b), no doubt taking the realistic view that any such application would be rejected summarily.
  3. Since the reforms have taken effect there have been an appreciable number of cases which have demonstrated that the blithe assumption in the consultation paper (that the parties’ emotional involvement in the case will not necessarily mean that they are unable to present it themselves, and that there is no reason to believe that such cases will be routinely legally complex) is unfounded. This was entirely predictable. The cases are Kinderis v Kineriene [2013] EWHC 4139 (Fam) (18 December 2013, Holman J); Re B (a child) (private law fact finding – unrepresented father) [2014] EWHC 700 (Fam) (27 January 2014, Judge Wildblood QC); Q v Q [2014] EWFC 7 (21 May 2014, the President); Q v Q (No. 2) [2014] EWFC 31 (6 August 2014, the President); Re H [2014] EWFC B127 (14 August 2014, Judge Hallam); Re D (A Child) [2014] EWFC 39 (31 October 2014, the President); CD v ED [2014] EWFC B153 (14 November 2014, Judge Hudson); Re D (A Child) (No. 2) [2015] EWFC 2 (7 January 2015, the President); and Re K & H (Children: Unrepresented Father: Cross-Examination of Child) [2015] EWFC 1 (5 January 2015, Judge Bellamy). This is a formidable catalogue. Each case focussed on the gross unfairness meted out to a parent in private law proceedings by the denial of legal aid. I do not think it would be right to say that these were examples of the operation of the law of unintended consequences since, as I say, the problems were so entirely predictable.
  4. Also of relevance is JG v The Lord Chancellor & Ors [2014] EWCA Civ 656 (21 May 2014) where the Court of Appeal held that the refusal of the (then) Legal Services Commission (LSC) to meet the cost of an expert report was unlawful. A district judge had ordered that the legally aided child, who was a party to the proceedings, should pay for that report. The order recorded that “the cost of the report to be funded by the child, the court considering it to be a reasonable and necessary disbursement to be incurred under the terms of her public funding certificate.” In the face of a dogged refusal to comply with this order by the LSC the district judge later ordered that:

    “The cost[s] of the expert to be funded by the child the court considering them to be a reasonable and necessary disbursement under her certificate and the purpose of the report is solely to establish what arrangements are in her best interests. Furthermore, the court has carried out a means assessment of both parents and found that they are unable to afford any part of these fees. In reaching this conclusion the court considered the provisions of section 22(4) of the Access to Justice Act 1999.”

    Notwithstanding this ruling the Legal Aid Agency (as the LSC had become) persisted in its refusal, and judicial review proceedings had to be commenced. The Legal Aid Agency actually succeeded at first instance but in the Court of Appeal, despite elaborate and trenchant argument by it and by the Lord Chancellor, who had intervened, its decision to refuse to comply with the order and to fund the report was held to be unlawful.

  5. In Lindner v Rawlins [2015] EWCA Civ 61 the Court of Appeal heard an appeal by an unrepresented husband against a refusal to order police disclosure in defended divorce proceedings. The wife was neither present nor represented. Aikens LJ observed that the appeal was technical and unusual and that the husband could not be expected to have mastered this area of the law in order to be able to present his appeal in a way that assisted the court. He bemoaned the lack of the legal assistance of counsel that the court should have.
  6. I need only cite a few of the judicial observations. In Kinderis v Kineriene Holman J described the position in which the unrepresented mother in Hague proceedings found herself as follows:

    “The present procedure operates in a way which is unjust, contrary to the welfare of particularly vulnerable children at a time of great upheaval in their lives, incompatible with the obligations of this state under Article 11(3) of the [B2R] regulation, and ultimately counter-productive in that it merely wastes taxpayers’ funds”

    In Re H Judge Hallam was dealing with an unrepresented mother with speech, hearing and learning difficulties. An official of the Legal Aid Agency stated that there would be no breach of convention rights were she to remain unfunded. Judge Hallam stated “I find that statement astounding”. In Re D the unrepresented father, who lacked capacity, had made an application to revoke a care order; the local authority had applied for a placement (for adoption) order. After heavy pressure from the President some legal aid was eventually awarded. At para 31(vi) of his first judgment the President stated:

    “Thus far the State has simply washed its hands of the problem, leaving the solution to the problem which the State itself has created – for the State has brought the proceedings but declined all responsibility for ensuring that the parents are able to participate effectively in the proceedings it has brought – to the goodwill, the charity, of the legal profession. This is, it might be thought, both unprincipled and unconscionable. Why should the State leave it to private individuals to ensure that the State is not in breach of the State’s – the United Kingdom’s – obligations under the Convention?”

    At para 21 of his second judgment he stated that “the parents can be forgiven for thinking that they are trapped in a system which is neither compassionate nor even humane.”

  7. In Lindner v Rawlins at para 34 Aikens LJ stated:

    “Yet again, the court was without any legal assistance and had to spend time researching the law for itself then attempting to apply it to the relevant facts in order to arrive at the correct legal answer. To do the latter exercise meant that the court itself had to trawl through a large amount of documents in the file. All this involves an expensive use of judicial time, which is in short supply as it is. Money may have been saved from the legal aid funds, but an equal amount of expense, if not more, has been incurred in terms of the costs of judges’ and court time. The result is that there is, in fact, no economy at all. Worse, this way of dealing with cases runs the risk that a correct result will not be reached because the court does not have the legal assistance of counsel that it should have and the court has no other legal assistance available to it.”

  8. These are powerful criticisms. The President suggested that if the Legal Aid Agency would not award legal aid to an unrepresented parent facing serious allegations then the court might have to do so from its own budget. In Re K & H that was the course proposed. The Lord Chancellor instructed leading counsel who bravely argued that the President’s analysis of the existence of this power was “plainly wrong”. Judge Bellamy disagreed and awarded representation from the court budget. The Lord Chancellor is appealing that decision. It can safely be assumed that the criticisms I have recounted have fallen on deaf ears. Based on the decisions I have cited, including no fewer than four from the President himself, it can be said that in the field of private children law the principle of individual justice has had to be sacrificed on the altar of the public debt. And based on the observation of Aikens LJ, it can reasonably be predicted that the phenomenon of the massive increase in self-representation will give rise to the serious risk of the court reaching incorrect, and therefore unjust, decisions.

 

Just in case you missed it, yes, that was a High Court judge saying that in private family law, the principle of individual justice has been sacrificed on the altar of public debt. And that LASPO is likely to lead to incorrect and unjust decisions.

That noise you can hear just to your leftmy applause echoing.

So, with legal aid not being available, and it being unfair for Jean and Marie to act in person, that was really only leaving Jim Francis as a source of funding.

How much money were we looking at?

  1. Decision
  2. In my judgment JF should pay 80% of each of the claims of MG and JG. Therefore he will pay MG £12,202 and JG £8,394. In addition he will pay 80% of all future professional costs in respect of therapeutic work and MG and JG will each pay 10% of such costs.
  3. Thus MG will have to find £3,050 and JG £2,098 and they will each have to find 10% of the future costs of therapeutic work. In my judgment they cannot reasonably or realistically be expected to find more. By contrast, I am satisfied that JF can find, without undue hardship, the share with which I have shouldered him.
  4. It could be said that it is grossly unfair that JF should have to pay now £20,596 plus 80% of the future therapeutic costs up to the IRH. But that is where the government has left him. It is a sorry state of affairs.
  5. This leaves the costs of expert evidence which will come into being between now and the IRH. The consent order provides for the educational psychologist to answer further questions and for the psychologist to file an addendum report. In my judgment these should be paid for by JFG and in my opinion such fees are a reasonable charge on his legal aid certificate, for the following reasons.
  6. In JG v The Lord Chancellor & Ors Black LJ explained at para 92 that when read with FPR rule 25.12(4)(a) (which provides that the court may give directions about the expert’s fees and expenses) rule 25.12(6) (which provides that provides that unless the court directs otherwise, the relevant parties are jointly and severally liable for the payment of the expert’s fees and expenses) is not intended to be prescriptive and merely establishes a default position for financial responsibility for the expert in the event that the court does not direct otherwise. She stated: “I do not see it as setting up a ‘normal rule’ that the cost is to be apportioned equally.”
  7. She further explained at para 93 that in order not to fall foul of section 22(4) of the Access to Justice Act 1999 that:

    “It is necessary to ask what order the court would make in its discretion on the particular facts of that case, leaving aside any resources problems. The answer may not uncommonly be an order for equal apportionment of the costs but that cannot be assumed. It may be that a full consideration of the circumstances of the case produces the result that the publicly funded party should be paying a greater share of the costs in any event, quite irrespective of any financial difficulties that the other parties may have in sharing the cost of the expert. In such circumstances, section 22(4) does not prevent the court from making an order accordingly, because the order is in no way affected by the fact of public funding.”

  8. I do not think that the imaginary scenario that I have to address assumes that everyone is of means. Rather, it assumes the facts as they are with the sole exception that the child is not legally aided but is funded from another source, such as his own means or the means of a relative of substance. Were that the position I would have no hesitation in making an order that JFG bear the costs of these further reports given that MG and JG do not, on my findings, have the means to do so, and given the burdens that I have already imposed on JF. Further, and in any event, it is just and reasonable that JFG bears these costs whether or not he is legally aided because at the end of the day these fees are being incurred primarily for his benefit.

 

 

And again, you read that right, that is a High Court Judge making a decision and saying that some could describe that decision as being grossly unfair but that this is the position that the Government have put this man in.

I partially wondered whether Mostyn J made this decision with a view to it being appealed and having the Court of Appeal rule that it would instead be right for the public authority (the Court) to fund the costs – at the moment, we only have the President’s hints that this is a route and His Honour Judge Bellamy doing it.  A Court of Appeal authority would be much more powerful. I’m not so sure though – an appeal (particularly paying the other sides costs) would run to more than this sum of money, and I think it is unlikely that Jim Francis would be tempted into appealing.

It is, as Mostyn J has said, a sorry state of affairs.

 

It makes uncomfortable reading for donors, or in fact any party in private law proceedings who is earning that sort of money (£67,000 is a lot, but it is not the riches of Croesus; it could easily bite on people who would much rather not spend half of their gross annual income on one court case)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Leave to revoke a Placement Order, successful appeal

Posted on February 23, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

Re G (a child) 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2015/119.html

 

The mother was appealing a refusal to grant her leave to apply to revoke a Placement Order (i.e to get her child back). She was in person in the Court of Appeal (and did a very good job) and won her appeal.

 

There are  few big points from this appeal which have wider application.

 

1. Change doesn’t have to be recent

(I think what the Court of Appeal say here rather destroys Mostyn J’s declaration that change has to be ‘unexpected’ because they are explicit that one shouldn’t read words into the statute that aren’t there)

I do not accept Mr Tughan’s submission that the nature and degree of the change of circumstances which a parent does successfully establish, is demoted by it being a recent change. This does add gloss to the words of the statute and should be resisted

 

2. Change doesn’t have to be change in the parent  – it can be change in the life of the child, or in the life of the child’s carers.

 

[This one interests me, because as far as I know, Mrs Suesspicious Minds was the first counsel to persuade a Court of that, so it is nice to see that she was right – as usual]

The “change in circumstances” specified in section 24(3) of the 2002 Act is not confined to the parent’s own circumstances. Depending upon the facts of the case, the child/ren’s circumstances may themselves have changed in the interim, not least by reason of the thwarted ambitions on the part of the local authority to place them for adoption in a timely fashion. I would regard it as unlikely for there to be many situations where the change in the child’s circumstances alone would be sufficient to open the gateway under section 24(2) and (3) and I do not suggest that there needs to be an in-depth analysis of the child/ren’s welfare needs at the first stage, which are more aptly considered at the second , but I cannot see how a court is able to disregard any changes in the child/ren’s circumstances, good or bad, if it is charged with evaluating the sufficiency of the nature and degree of the parent’s change of circumstances.

 

3. Take care in using a note of judgment as if it were a transcript

 

In this case, the Care Order and Placement Order had been made by a District Judge, and the leave to oppose hearing was heard by a Circuit Judge. The CJ had been given counsel’s note of the hearing / judgment, but read it into the judgment on leave to oppose as though quoting the District Judge directly.

The only document that assists is Counsel’s “note of final hearing” prepared by Mr Hepher on 20 August 2012 for his Instructing Solicitor. It has not been approved by the DDJ Johns.

Contrary to what HHJ Levy said in her judgment, the note does not pretend to be a note of the judgment; rather it is the subjective assessment of the hearing and its outcome, giving a potted version of the judge’s conclusions. Counsel who appeared for the Local Authority could have no idea or intention that it would be referred to in any future proceedings or appellate jurisdiction. However, HHJ Levy placed reliance upon it and, it seems to me, elevated Counsel’s written opinion that “the evidence did not go well for [the mother]. She became upset and gave loud, aggressive and frequent inconsistent and confrontational answers when challenged” into findings made by the first instance judge and thereafter cited Counsel’s summary of a part of the judgment in quotation marks, giving the appearance that the same were spoken by the DDJ Johns.

The fact of its quotation by HHJ Levy leads me to conclude that it was instrumental in her decision and I therefore refer to it in full. HHJ Levy said that “[t]he judge had concluded by summing up the mother as: ‘…angry, resentful and accusatory of professionals…blaming of others, was unable to explain the impact of domestic violence and undesirability of drug use, and had a casual disregard to telling the truth. She had no insight into the magnitude of the risks the father might pose, nor the impact of her own behaviour. She was not able to sustain motivation for any meaningful change”.

…Quite apart from the issues raised in the grounds of appeal, I would express my great concern at other aspects of the procedure that was adopted at first instance and which are capable of further infecting the outcome. That is, HHJ Levy was disadvantaged in the absence of DDJ John’s judgment and “agreed threshold criteria” and was wrong to accept counsel’s unapproved “note of the hearing” as a sufficient substitute, even though I am sure she was well intentioned in seeking to avoid delay. She could not possibly establish the true base line in the absence of the “agreed threshold criteria” document, which itself recorded some issues of fact and differing interpretation of others, without reconstructing the evidence that had been available in the court below. In doing so she appeared to rely entirely upon the reports submitted by the social worker and guardian.

 

4. You need to be quite careful about ruling that a parent had not satisfied the first limb of the two stage test (has there been a change in circumstances?)

The Court of Appeal here sent the case back for re-hearing, but were very plain that their view was that the first limb had been crossed and quite comfortably.

5. Fresh evidence

The Local Authority had brought to the Court of Appeal a statement that gave information about family finding – in effect, providing evidence that an adoptive placement was on the cards. The Court of Appeal deprecated this practice.  This was really a request to introduce fresh evidence to the appeal, and if so, a proper application needed to be made, with all of the Ladd v Marshall principles argued  (it is REALLY  hard to get fresh evidence in on appeal, other than in criminal proceedings where the fresh evidence is something like an alibi, or CCTV footage or some sort of CSI test which would undermine the conviction)

 

  1. Shortly before coming into court, a statement prepared by Ms Faith Connell, J’s social worker, unsigned but dated 9 January, 2015 was sent through uninvited. There is no application to admit fresh evidence. I am told by Mr Tughan that it is intended to update the court on ‘family finding’ for J. This practice is becoming increasingly common and I think it entirely inappropriate. If the statement contains fresh evidence which is pertinent to the appeal then leave should be sought in accordance with normal procedure to admit it. If it does not, it may appear as an attempt to influence the outcome of the appeal. Mr Tughan assures me that that is not intended, but that it was submitted with a view to assisting the court if it wished to substitute its own order for that of the court below.
  2. As it is, this is not a court of first instance and is not in a position to determine the disputed factual issues raised in the mother’s application before HHJ Levy, let alone fresh facts on the unilateral presentation of what may be challenged evidence and opinion going to inform the discretion stage. I have refused to read the statement in those circumstances and particularly since the mother is unrepresented.

 

6. You can only ‘shore up’ a judgment so far

In discussion, Mr Tughan was obliged to concede that he was attempting to “shore up” the judgment of HHJ Levy. He accepted the absence of any findings in the judgment that were directly relevant to the adverse findings apparently made against the mother by DDJ Johns and upon which HHJ Levy relied. He argued that some issues that were recorded in the judgment had been ‘resolved’ during the course of the proceedings – entirely, I observe, in favour of the mother’s contentions – and that it was unnecessary to make certain other findings, including whether the mother’s relationship with her previous partner had ended, the extent if any of her drug use, and whether she had threatened the current social worker with violence. He accepted that the Court would “struggle to piece together” HHJ Levy’s thought processes, but that they could be “pieced together” when analysed in the round. He argued that the bar had been set at a high level by reason of the findings made in the original care proceedings and that the self reported changes by a mother, whose credibility had been doubted in the past and, implicitly I think he was suggesting, was in any event so emotionally compromised in relation to an objective consideration of J’s best interests, had inevitably led the judge to conclude that she still had a “long way to go”.

 

The mother was of course appealing the judgment that was made, not the shored up version that counsel for the Local Authority was skilfully presenting. She won her case, and that was the right decision. Nobody knows how the re-hearing will go.

 

6. Threshold post Re A

 

The Court of Appeal here accepted that the threshold were ‘more than satisfied’ and that they had no doubt about that.

Let’s have a look at the threshold then.

A document headed “Agreed Threshold Criteria – 17.7.12” gives some indication of the circumstances of J’s removal. In summary, J’s father has previous convictions for serious drugs and violence. In June 2009, the mother attempted to prevent his arrest for the offence of armed robbery. The father was subsequently jailed. The mother commenced a new relationship. Her new partner also had previous convictions and was a serial offender. Regrettably he was violent to the mother. She continued with the relationship and was said to prioritise her relationship with her partner over her own and J’s safety. The mother disagreed but there is objective evidence that she found it difficult to separate from her partner, refusing an injunction and visiting him in prison whilst he was serving a sentence for assaulting her. The mother was said to continue to “minimise and excuse the extent and impact of the domestic violence and conflict to which J had been exposed”. She herself smoked cannabis but denied that she had used class A drugs. It is clear that she was not co-operative with social services and would routinely deceive them about her home circumstances.

 

Reading this document I have no doubt that the so called threshold criteria imposed by section 31 of the Children’s Act 1989 were more than satisfied.

A lot of this looks like the sort of thing that the President threw out on its ear last week. This isn’t a case where the mother herself posed a risk.  At best, or worst, her partner might have.  But he seemed to be in prison.  Cannabis – gone. Not co-operative with social services – gone.  Assisting father three years earlier to resist arrest – what’s the risk to the child? gone. . Violence from former partner – well, the President seemed to be suggesting that there are people who have had dv in their relationships who would not cross threshold – it would depend on the extent and nature of it.  Minimising dv – gone. Visiting former partner in prison – well, if he wasn’t established to be a risk of harm to the child, so be it.

Too early to say whether the Court of Appeal are going to take a different view to the President on Re A, but if you apply the Re A principles the threshold here is either not crossed or it just limps over the line. Yet the Court of Appeal consider that there is no doubt that it was more than satisfied. Hmmm.

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