Tag Archives: private law

The importance of being formal

Posted on October 22, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

 

 

A discussion of the private law case of Re K (A child) 2012 EWCA Civ 1306.

 

 

The judgment of the Court of Appeal can be found here

 

http://www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed102441

 

 

Normally I start with – the facts of this case are quite straightforward, but in this one, they aren’t.

 

There are four children, A, S, G and B.  The children were all the biological children of one woman, the mother.  A and S were the children of the father.  G and B were, the mother says, fathered by two different men who had raped her, years apart.

 

A, S, G and B all lived with the father, who although not being the biological parent of G and B was a father figure to them.

 

A younger child from another relationship, D, lived with the mother.

 

There were serious allegations that mother had emotionally mistreated the children, and the section 7 report was clearly in favour of the children residing with the father, and indeed had gone further in saying that if there was a shift in residence, the Local Authority would commence care proceedings to protect the children from the risk they considered mother to pose.

 

The appeal arose as a result of a review hearing in residence and contact dispute.  At the review hearing, set up by a previous directions hearing ordering the author of the section 7 report to attend and be cross-examined, the positions of the parties were this :-

 

Mother invited the Court to appoint a Guardian and a child psychologist, so that the issues in relation to the children’s wishes and feelings could be explored.

 

Father invited the Court to make final Residence Orders and conclude the case.

 

 

An odd feature of this appeal was that the tape machine had not been working, and thus neither the judgment, nor the hearing itself had been recorded.  Therefore, any criticisms I make of those representing mother are with the caveat that the matters which seem to be omissions might well have been dealt with and just not recorded. And they arise from the criticisms made by the Court of Appeal.

 

The Judge dismissed the applications for a Guardian or a child psychologist to be appointed, made Residence Orders and made an order for contact which was  “as directed by the Local Authority”, making it plain that the orders were not “set in stone” and that mother could bring a fresh application if things were not working.

 

The mother appealed on these grounds :-

 

 

  1. That the decision to refuse a child psychologist or a Guardian was plainly wrong.
  2. That the Judge had effectively abdicated decision-making about frequency and duration of contact to the Local Authority
  3. That he had made a final order at a review hearing and had not heard evidence from either parent (although he had heard evidence from the social worker)
  4. That the allegations made against mother, and the cross-allegations of domestic violence were not determined at a finding of fact hearing.

 

 

 

 

The Court of Appeal rejected the mother’s arguments about instruction of a Guardian or child psychologist, considering the judge’s reasoning on this to be solid and it being a valid case management decision.

 

The lead judgment was delivered by Lady Justice Black.

 

35. I can deal robustly and swiftly with the question of the appointment of a guardian and/or a psychologist.  I am not persuaded by the mother’s arguments in this respect.  The judge had the benefit of input from the local authority, who had been very much involved in the case over a period of time.  They were not abandoning the case but were intending to continue their attempts to persuade G to see his mother and would continue to enable B to do so.  It was certainly open to the judge to take the view that it was difficult to see what more another expert could offer and that this was not the moment to take the course of involving another person in the children’s lives.  Furthermore, appointing a guardian or instructing a psychologist would inevitably take time and he was entitled to put into the balance in this respect that the children needed to be settled and to return to normality.  Protracted court proceedings would not help with that.

 

The Court of Appeal also considered the Judge’s position on contact to be acceptable.

 

36. I am not persuaded by the mother’s argument that the judge abdicated responsibility for solving the contact issue either.  He determined that contact should be taking place and he made the decision to continue to entrust the furtherance of it to social services because he thought that G would come round.  He made clear that this was not a final decision and that the mother could bring the matter back to court if it did not progress.  Keeping the proceedings open for a further year and expressly providing for liberty to apply, which was not necessary in law and must therefore have been included as a deliberate message that the decision was not as the judge said “set in stone”, underlined this.  The judge was entitled to take the view that this was the course that was in G’s best interests for the moment.

 

 

But it was the summary disposal of the case that concerned them.

 

The Court of Appeal note that from the notes of the hearing that they had been supplied with, those representing the mother had focussed on their application for adjournment and had not addressed the Court specifically on the mother giving evidence, or the need for a finding of fact hearing, or the reasons not to make final orders in accordance with father’s case.

 

[As indicated earlier, it may be that all of those things were done, but it was not recorded on the notes of hearing that the Court of Appeal were supplied with. I don’t want to cast aspersions on those representing mother, as that would be unfair given that I wasn’t there, and haven’t seen a full transcript]

 

40. I can well understand how it was that the judge took the approach that he did, that is not hearing from the parents.  He was anxious, rightly, that the proceedings should not be drawn out any longer, and no doubt he was influenced by the weight of the evidence in support of the factual case put forward by the father and supported by the local authority’s investigations, and also by the practical difficulties in the way of the mother’s application for residence.  Time had run out for the hearing, almost certainly because of the pressure of work in the court and it was already late in the day, and perhaps most importantly the judge was not asked by counsel for the mother to hear evidence from her or to permit cross-examination of the father.  Counsel for the mother seems to have been taken by surprise by the judge’s final determination of matters.  He was, as I have said, concentrating on persuading the judge that the matter should be adjourned for the intervention of a guardian or a psychological report and he did not expect that the judge would not only dismiss that application but also proceed to make final orders. 

 41. There are certain situations in which it is correct for a court to deal with applications summarily or on very limited evidence, but if that is to occur it is normally necessary for there to be some argument as to whether that is an appropriate course and a determination by the judge that it is for reasons which he articulates. 

42. In this case the course that was taken does not seem to have been the subject of such a process.  I am driven to the view, in all the circumstances, that the procedure adopted by the judge was rather too pragmatic and resulted in a hearing that was not entirely fair to the mother. 

 

 

So the Appeal was allowed.  Between the initial decision and the appeal hearing, there were some extraordinary developments. That is a massive understatement.

 

 

43. A few days ago the father’s solicitors wrote to the mother’s solicitors saying that contact with B, the only child who had been seeing the mother without problems, was going to be suspended.  This was said to be because of a series of incidents which had given rise to concern about B’s safety and the father’s. They included the following.  A man who called himself Stuart had turned up at B’s school claiming to be B’s father.  A man who gave a different name had turned up at the contact centre wanting to join in contact with B.  A third incident involved a man trying to snatch B from the father on a tube station platform. 

44. The mother’s solicitors replied to the father’s solicitors saying that in mid-July, when at Homebase, the mother had recognised the man who raped her and had approached him and told him that B had been born as a result of the rape.  The man (Stuart), had subsequently attended at B’s school and at the contact centre.  Stuart told the mother that the father was behind the rape, having instructed Stuart to beat the mother up and rape her, and said that if he did not do so he would be paid a visit in relation to money that he owed the father for drugs and could not afford to pay. 

45. Both parties concede that, in the light of this new and presently untested material and the suspension of contact with B, the case will have to return to the county court judge in any event now and that findings will have to be made about factual allegations

 Now that will be an interesting finding of fact hearing. Given that as we know, the Court findings are binary (a thing either is proved to have happened, or it is proved to have not happened; there is no ‘not proven’ or ‘not sure’)  either the father recruited and paid a man to rape the mother, or the mother has made the most scandalous and false allegations about the father. Either eventuality has huge implications for the children and their relationship with both parents. It is hard to see how they could go on to have a meaningful and full relationship with both parents after the determination of which of these two possibilities is true.

It is worth noting that the two other Appeal Court judges, whilst granting the appeal, expressed quite a bit of sympathy with the trial judge, and the Court as a whole communicated the need for all court hearings to be properly set up with clear and recorded ambit for the hearing , and for the formalities to be observed.

 

50. I would just add one short postscript.  Family practitioners and judges have become adept at dealing with situations that are continually developing, which are not straightforward, and which require speedy decisions for which there is often insufficient court time.  Conscious that children await their decisions they respond valiantly by getting on with the job without insisting on too many formalities.  However, it is important that everyone understands the issues that are to be determined at each hearing and addresses the form that the hearing will take, ensuring that the process is robust enough, not too robust. The mother in this case had not filed a formal application for residence and contact and it would have assisted in an understanding of the matters that had to be determined had she done so.  Indeed, it may be helpful generally if rather greater attention is paid to the formalities in family proceedings. 

51. Secondly, a word about review hearings.  Hearings at which there is to be a “review” of a case are not at all uncommon, but they do carry a risk that there is a misunderstanding as to what will be addressed by the court.  It is important that in advance of such a hearing, there is as much clarity as possible about its form and ambit, the issues that will be addressed, whether evidence is contemplated and whether the orders that result will be case management orders or orders of substance and, if the latter, whether interim or final

 

 

And

 

Lord Justice Aikens

 

53. I would just wish to add two comments, however.  First, I can well understand why in the circumstances the judge took the robust and pragmatic course that he did.  In particular I would note that the judge’s course should be seen against the fact that the mother, represented by counsel, did not apply for the mother to be heard or for the father to be cross-examined; she did not submit that there should be an interim residence order and did not seek an adjournment.

54. My second comment is this. I entirely agree with what my Lady has said about the need for requisite formalities in family cases.  If those formalities had been observed in this case, it is possible, to put it no higher, that the current position could have been avoided

 

 

I think it would be unlikely that someone appealing in the future on the grounds that a Judge had not heard from their client would be likely to succeed if they hadn’t made representations before the Court that their client should give evidence, for example.

 

No matter how confident one might be that your application for an adjournment will be granted, it is absolutely necessary to make sure that you deal with the counter applications that are being made, to ensure that the Court know that you resist those and the reasons why.  Likewise, if a finding of fact hearing is sought, a schedule of allegations ought to be drawn up and lodged and a formal request made for such a determination.

 

 

The comments about review hearings are, I think, very sensible. The term is so widely drawn that it covers everything from a quick look to see that everything is on track, to interlocutory arguments about experts and evidence, to “well, it might be possible to conclude the case”  and it is better to record clearly on the face of the order what the issues to be reviewed are, and what is envisaged might be achieved at such a hearing.

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Last night a Re J saved my life… (I am so, so sorry)

Posted on October 16, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

 I could not resist, once it came into my mind. And those of you with a classical education are muttering, that the shabby pun doesn’t even work if you pronounce it “Ray J”  – so a double apologies to the Brothers of Boris.  

 

A discussion of the decision of the Court of Appeal in Re J (A child) 2012, and where the bright line falls in a Judge allowing a case to be put and curtailing cross-examination that they aren’t finding helpful.

 

The case can be found here:- http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2012/1231.html

It is, sadly, once again, one of those private law cases that have gone on for nine years, without very much being resolved in any of that time.

 

I was counting the number of different judges that had dealt with interlocutory hearings, and reached ten.

It is little wonder, with such lack of judicial continuity, that the scale of the litigation and the need to grip it and reach a proper final conclusion wriggles away.

 

The point of appeal is interesting – the father’s case was in effect, that as we so often see, the pace of movement and progress on contact is dictated by the mother, who makes a series of objections that are never resolved in litigation but the case inches forward, bit by bit, always at the pace the mother is able to get away with. [I am not saying that this happens in all cases, or even a lot of cases, but I am certainly familiar with it happening in some. To avoid sexism, it is the person who has day to day care who tends to take this approach, I don’t think it is gender specific per se]

On cross-examining the mother about her various shifts in position and historical objections to contact – with a view to establishing that her current position was unreasonable, the father’s counsel was stopped by the Judge.

 

25. Realistically, if I may say so, Ms Thain did not press the first of the father’s two complaints on this part of his appeal. The key point, which she understandably put at the forefront of her submissions, was that the Recorder wrongly limited the ambit of the factual investigation upon which, as she would have it, Ms Holmes properly wished to embark in her cross-examination of the mother.

26. The matter arose in this way. In her application filed in October 2011 the mother, as we have seen, was opposed to anything other than supervised contact. By the time of the hearing in March 2011 the mother was expressing herself as being “happy” with unsupervised contact: this was the word she used (Transcript p 46) in answer to questions from the Recorder. Indeed, it seemed from her answers to the Recorder (see Transcript p 51) that she had no objection in principle to overnight contact. When Ms Holmes tried to put this change in her stance to the mother (Transcript p 61) she was stopped by the Recorder (Transcript p 62): “Do not answer this question … I say do not answer it because I do not see where it is going.”

When Ms Holmes tried to explain, the Recorder broke in: “do you really want the witness to rake over all her earlier concerns and worries?”

27. Ms Holmes persisted: “Your Honour the problem is … that repeatedly what the mother does is she makes allegations that stops contact, she then comes to court and makes … concessions in court that lead to a small step forward. The point I’m making is … that if we are going to have a stable regime of contact… that is going to last I think we need to get to the bottom of what the problems are because otherwise the worry the father has is we go away from here, two months down the line all the same allegations, and we come back to court again and we’re back to where we were, square one.”

The Recorder responded: “Well I think you will find that the court, at least this court, will want to move forward rather than to linger … I have to approach the case as it is today, the witness has said, and I am sure your client would want to move forward from where it is today rather than, as it were, have a kneejerk reaction … to kick it back to the order of District Judge Chandler in 2008.”

Ms Holmes then made a very pertinent point (Transcript p 63): “But Your Honour the reality is … that what she is proposing is that she dictates the way in which it moves forward. That she is saying it should move forward in this particular way only … when we have never actually established why the previous arrangements were wrong.”

She added: “But we’re now in a situation where the mother is determining that there should be a vast reduction from that level of contact. I’m trying to get to the bottom of why she feels that that is necessary.”

The Recorder then made his position very clear (Transcript p 62): “Well let me reassure you, you are not going to gain any mileage from this line of cross-examination and I am interested in looking forward and with that in mind do you have any further questions?”

28. Ms Holmes soldiered on for a while. As the short adjournment approached the Recorder said this (Transcript p 68): “I am going to curtail your cross-examination unless you want to investigate what would be more acceptable to [mother] otherwise we shall move straight to your client.”

Ms Holmes made clear (Transcript p 69) that: “if I am not able to explore [the allegations being made by the mother] then it does hamper my ability to be able to put my client’s case.” The Recorder was unmoved: “Well that may be but it seems to me we are where we are”.

29. In his judgment the Recorder acknowledged (Transcript para [3]) that he had not permitted cross-examination, as he put it, “going back into the mists of time”. He explained why: “it seemed to me … and it still seems to me, that the proper starting point for the hearing today is today.”

30. The point made by Ms Holmes in her skeleton argument and elaborated by Ms Thain in her oral submissions is simple and compelling. The Recorder concentrated on how things might move forward without questioning, or allowing counsel to question, how or why the current state of affairs had come about and whether the mother’s reasons for unilaterally varying the previous court order were justified. This, it is said, was particularly alarming given what Dr Little and Ms Coatalen had said in their earlier reports – material suggesting that there could be a pattern to the mother’s behaviour requiring investigation of the kind the Recorder refused to permit. In short, it is said, by restricting cross-examination of the mother the Recorder ensured that it would be impossible for him to carry out the task required of him and denied the father a fair hearing.

If I may say, I  very much like the cut of Ms Holmes’ jib here.

The Court of Appeal, unsurprisingly, took a dim view of the Judge’s view that the past was of no interest to him in making decisions about the future.

31. In my judgment the father’s appeal must be allowed on this ground alone.

32. The point is really quite short and simple. Of course the Recorder was right in saying that one had to look to the future: after all, his task was to determine J’s future living arrangements. And of course, in one sense, the Recorder was right to look at how matters stood on the day of the hearing: after all, things were as they were. But his error – and in my judgment he here fell into plain and obvious error – was in rejecting Ms Holmes’ entirely justified desire to explore the crucial question of why it was that things were as they were at the date of the hearing. The investigation – the cross-examination – that Ms Holmes wished to undertake was not something she wished to pursue Micawber-like in the speculative hope, absent any reason to believe so, that something might turn up. On the contrary, and as she explained to the Recorder, there were at least two things she wished to explore, and which in my judgment cried out for investigation: first, why the mother’s attitude had changed between October 2011 and March 2012; second, and even more important, why the arrangements agreed in January 2008 had not worked out and why the mother believed they needed to be changed.

 

33. The Recorder may have been right in doubting the utility of an investigation “back into the mists of time”, but this was not what Ms Holmes was suggesting and it was no answer to the need for a more focused investigation of the kind she wanted to undertake. As my analysis of the litigation shows, there was a very clear point in the past which was the obvious initial starting point for such an investigation: the order made by District Judge Chandler on 7 January 2008. Two things about that order are striking: first, it was made against the background of the concerning matters identified and considered by Dr Little and Ms Coatalen, and taking into account Ms Coatalen’s recommendations; second, it was an order made by consent and moreover, as the order itself makes clear, on an occasion when the mother was represented by counsel. Now of course in a case such as this a consent order does not have the same status as a consent order made in ordinary civil proceedings, but it was nevertheless entirely understandable that Ms Holmes should wish to probe with the mother why she no longer saw the order she had agreed to as being appropriate. Moreover, given what Dr Little and Ms Coatalen had said, Ms Holmes had every justification for wishing to explore whether the explanation for the mother’s change of view since January 2008 lay in those matters which had caused Dr Little and Ms Coatalen concern rather than in the explanations now being offered by the mother.

34. Whether it would have been appropriate for Ms Holmes to seek to push the investigation farther back into the past – even assuming she would have wanted to – was, I should add, not a matter calling for a ruling at the outset. It was a matter to be considered, if the need arose, in the light of how the preceding cross-examination had gone.

35. Of course, and even in a family case, a judge should stop irrelevant or time-wasting cross-examination. But a judge should always bear in mind that, however carefully he has read the papers beforehand, counsel is likely to have a better grasp of the inner forensic realities of the case. And a judge does well to think twice if, as here, his intervention is met by counsel standing her ground and carefully explaining why she wishes to cross-examine in a particular way, especially if, as here, counsel’s reasons have obviously been carefully considered and are not just ‘off-the-cuff’. Ms Holmes is to be congratulated for doing her duty, politely but firmly standing her ground and telling the Recorder plainly that his ruling was preventing her putting her client’s case. It is a pity that the Recorder did not, even at that point, see any reason to change his mind.

36. In my judgment, the effect of this was indeed, as submitted to us, to disable the Recorder from carrying out the task required of him and to deny the father a fair hearing. But I go further. To deny the father a fair hearing and a proper opportunity to put his case was also, of course, to deny J a fair hearing. And for the reasons given by McFarlane LJ it may also have meant that the mother’s case was not properly considered.

37. There is no way in which we can remedy things except by allowing the appeal and directing a re-trial at which those matters which the Recorder refused to consider can be properly investigated. In the circumstances the re-trial must be in front of a different judge.

 

The telling point here is that father’s counsel was able to set out the purpose of her cross-examination and that it had a relevant and pertinent aim and intention, and was not just a string of questions in the hope that something good might come out of it. Judges wishing to curtail cross-examination will need, as a result, to hear what underpins the questions; and counsel faced with potentially irascible tribunals will need to have at their fingertips an explanation of the strategic thrust of the topic and why it goes to the live issues in the case. [If they are not able to produce an answer to that readily, they perhaps shouldn’t be embarking on that line of questioning…]

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