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Join Rosalind English in Episode 211 as she discusses with Lucy McCann and Jonathan Metzer of 1 Crown Office Row the cases that have been decided at all levels in the courts in 2024 that have had, or will have, important implications for practitioners and litigants in fields ranging from children in care through anonymity in medical negligence to the forfeiture of property under the Suicide Act 1961 in the light of the passage of the Assisted Dying Bill. The cases we talk about include the following:
HXA v Surrey County Council [2023] UKSC 52 (abuse, failure to remove and Article 3)
AB (by the Official Solicitor) v Worcestershire County Council and Anor [2023] EWCA Civ 529 (local authority liability under Article 3)
Sammut v Next Steps Mental Healthcare Ltd [2024] EWHC 2265 (KB) (inquests, Article 2 and private care homes)
PMC v A Local Health Board [2024] EWHC 2969 (KB) (anonymisation in clinical negligence cases)
Abbasi and Haastrup (conjoined cases) [2023] EWCA Civ 331 (reporting restriction orders, anonymisation of professionals in medical treatment cases)
Paul v Wolverhampton NHS Trust [2022] EWCA Civ 12 (psychiatric injury or “nervous shock)
Tindall & Anor v Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police [2024] UKSC 33 (23 October 2024) (police Liability)
N v Poole Borough Council [2019] UKSC 25 (duty of care of public authorities)
Philip Morris v James Morris, Kate Shmuel and Gregory White [2024] EWHC 2554 (Ch) (assisted dying and the Forfeiture Act)
McKleenon, re Application for Judicial Review (Northern Ireland) 2024 UKSC 31 (judicial review and remedies)AB
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Health Secretary Wes Streeting revealed last week that the Government has placed an indefinite ban on the use of puberty blockers for trans youth, following advice from the Commission on Human Medicines that the medicines pose an ‘unacceptable safety risk’. The ban also follows the recommendations of the recent Cass Review, which was heavily criticised by rights groups. Speaking to the Commons on Wednesday, Streeting stressed that he was ‘determined’ to improve healthcare for trans youth. However, the ban has come under fire from a wide range of rights groups, educational psychologists, clinicians, and members of the British Medical Association. This news comes the same week that the Montana Supreme Court temporarily lifted the state’s ban on puberty blockers while its lawfulness is considered in the courts.
The Government announced last week that £75 million has been made available to compensate LGBT veterans who were affected by the historic ban on LGBT personnel in the Armed Forces. Veterans who were dismissed or discharged as a result of their LGBT identity, real or perceived, will also be able to apply to have their rank restored or discharge reason amended. The announcement represents a major step in the implementation of the recommendations made by the Etherton Review, which looked into the ill treatment of LGBT veterans in the past. Secretary for Defence, John Healey, has called the historic treatment of LGBT veterans a ‘moral stain on our nation’ and expressed his commitment to ‘righting the wrongs of the past’.
A report published by the Women and Equalities Committee this week has found that ‘medical misogyny’ is contributing to the underdiagnosis of serious reproductive health conditions, with women having their painful symptoms ‘normalised’ and ‘dismissed’. The report is critical of the speed of progress following the establishment of the Women’s Health Strategy in 2022, stating that implementation has been slow and incomplete. Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, Sarah Owen, stated that women are “waiting years for life-changing treatment and in too many cases are being put through trauma-inducing procedures”. “All the while, their conditions worsen and become more complicated to treat”. The report “must act as a wake-up call” for the NHS, she added.
In Other News
The Assad regime, a hereditary totalitarian regime which has governed Syria since 1971, collapsed last week as Damascus was captured by opposition forces. Broadcasting on Syrian national television, the rebels announced at dawn on December 8th that the “tyrant al-Assad” had been “toppled”. It has been reported that Bashar al-Assad has fled to Russia, where he has been granted asylum on ‘humanitarian grounds’. The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, released a statement celebrating that “after 14 years of brutal war and the fall of the dictatorial regime, today the people of Syria can seize an historic opportunity to build a stable and peaceful future”. Burcu Ozcelik, senior research fellow at London think tank Royal United Services Institute, has said there while there was ‘undoubtedly justified optimism in Syria’ at the news, it is ‘simultaneously true that Syria remains fragile and faces an uncertain future’. Since the overthrow, Israel has intensified airstrikes on Syria and invaded the demilitarised buffer zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The UN has responded stating it is “deeply concerned by the recent and extensive violations of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
The MPs who thwarted the declaration of marshal law by South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol in early December have now voted for his impeachment. The imposition of martial law was said to be necessary to protect the country from “anti-state forces” and the North Korean threat. Within two hours, MPs forcibly entered the National Assembly to vote against the declaration – with the Parliament’s speaker telling the BBC he climbed over a wall to gain entry so he could ‘protect democracy’. Large crowds gathered in Seoul as the impeachment vote took place, with police revealing they expected as many as 200,000 protestors. In a televised address, Yoon insisted that he will fight “until the end” to defend his “act of governance” in imposing martial law.
This was not a class action but a representative action, pursuant to what is now Civil Procedure Rule (CPR) 19.8, for the tort of misuse of private information against the respondents Google UK Limited (Google) and DeepMind Technologies Limited (DeepMind). The action was on behalf of Mr Prismall and a class of persons said to number approximately 1.6 million.
The appeal was against the striking out of his representative claim for misuse of private information in the court below. In a representative action like this the task before the judge is to establish whether the “lowest common denominator” claimant in the class would fail to make their claim. The judge found that the lowest common denominator claimant in the group of persons represented did not have a realistic prospect of success.
Details of the Case
The claim was for damages in respect of both the one-off transfer by the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust (the Royal Free Trust) of data in October 2015, and the continuing transfer of data thereafter until 29 September 2017 pursuant to a live data feed. The data which was transferred took the form of patient-identifiable medical records held by the Royal Free Trust of patients, including Mr Prismall, who had attended hospitals in the Royal Free Trust or had blood tests processed by laboratories operated by the Royal Free Trust between 29 September 2010 and 29 September 2015. Google and DeepMind used the data for the purposes of developing an app called “Streams” which was intended to be used to identify and treat patients suffering from Acute Kidney Injury. Google and DeepMind also had, however, a contractual entitlement to use the data for purposes wider than direct patient care and to develop and prove capabilities to enhance future commercial prospects.
At first instance the judge found that each member of the class did not have a realistic prospect of establishing a reasonable expectation of privacy in respect of their medical records or of crossing the de minimis threshold in relation to such an expectation such that there was no realistic prospect of establishing misuse of private information of each member of the class, or a realistic prospect of establishing an entitlement to damages for loss of control. The lowest common denominator was a notional claimant in the class whose claim represented the “irreducible minimum scenario” for a claimant in the class of persons. The judge’s lowest common denominator claimant was premised on the basis that there was one attendance at a trust hospital, which was an attendance not concerning “a medical condition involving any particular sensitivity or stigma” and there being “no specific reference to the medical condition that had prompted the attendance”. The judge had identified for the irreducible minimum scenario for the lowest denominator claimant that “no upset or concern was caused by the data transfer”. The judge found that the lowest common denominator claimant’s claim would fail.
Grounds of claim
Mr Prismall’s claim related to the wrongful use of private patient information by Google and DeepMind in: (1) obtaining patient-identifiable medical records with a contractual entitlement under the Information Sharing Agreement which was wider than direct patient care and the Streams project;
(2) storing the medical records prior to Streams becoming operational;
(3) using the medical records in the research and development of Streams; and
(4) developing and providing their general capabilities by the use of the medical records for the purposes of future commercial prospects. Damages were claimed for loss of control of the private information only.
The judge said that it was “also well-established that not every disclosure of medical information will give rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy and/or involve an unlawful interference.” If anodyne or trivial information about a brief hospital visit was made public by a patient, the judge saw no reason why that information would attract a reasonable expectation of privacy by dint of it being recorded in a medical record.
In Episode 209, Jim Duffy is joined by fellow 1COR barristers Alasdair Henderson and Paula Kelly to examine recent judicial attempts to grapple with questions of gender in the workplace. How do the UK courts and tribunals distinguish legitimate and protected expressions of belief from harassment and transphobia?
This was a very simple case that illustrates in a nutshell the courts’ approach to the principle of “ex turpi causa”: the notion that prevents a claimant from seeking a legal remedy if the claim arises in connection with their own illegal or immoral act. Even in a civil case, courts are reluctant to allow a party to benefit from their own wrongdoing, as it may be seen as contrary to the interests of justice and social morals. However, it cannot be a blanket rule, as we shall see from the case below. Proportionality has to to be applied.
This concerned an RTA leading to a claim for damages by the claimant for repair to his car after the defendant negligently drove his lorry into it whilst it was parked.
A small and mundane detail could have made all the difference to the outcome. The claimant had not renewed the MOT on his car for some months before the accident, so that the defendant pleaded that the the claimant’s argument that he needed to be reimbursed for the car he had to hire after his car had been damaged meant that he had had no insurance at the time of the accident, and that the claim should fall as being ex turpi causa (Agheampong v Allied Manufacturing (London) Ltd [2009] Lloyds Rep IR 379.)
Furthermore, and as the next logical step, the defendant asserted that, because there was no valid MOT certificate for the Volvo, the claimant had suffered no compensable loss when the Volvo was rendered unroadworthy by the defendant’s tort. This was called a “causation defence”.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill passed its second reading debate on 29 November 2024. The current draft of the bill is available here. The dates for the Committee Stage have not yet been announced. Supporters of the bill point out that the bill is limited to allowing assisted dying only for adults with mental capacity who have a terminal illness and can be reasonably expected to die within six months and has a range of safeguards. The process to request assistance requires the approval of two doctors (independent of each other) and a High Court judge. THe bill also creates an offence of dishonesty, coercion and pressure to protect vulnerable people from inappropriate pressures. However, critics of the bill cast doubt on the safeguards, arguing that people can shop around for doctors and that there are not enough High Court judges to provide sufficient scrutiny of applications. There are also continuing debates regarding whether the bill creates a “slippery slope” allowing assisted dying to be available to more people in the future (for example here and here).
In the courts The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has published a judgment that could have wide ranging impacts on states obligations with respect to protection for LGBTQ asylum-seekers. MI is a gay man from Iran who was facing threats from his relatives due to his sexual orientation. He was denied asylum in Switzerland with the Federal Administrative Court holding that while homosexuality is a criminal offence in Iran, in practice convictions are rare. The Federal Administrative Court held that MI’s sexual orientation was not widely known and so he would be safe in Iran provided that he lived “a life of discretion”. The ECtHR held that the Swiss authorities incorrectly determined that MI faced no real risk of ill-treatment because it was unlikely that MI’s sexual orientation would become known to the Iranian authorities. Further, the Swiss authorities failed to carry out the necessary assessment of the availability of state protection against harm caused by non-state actors (in this case MI’s relatives). The ECtHR went on to hold that it would be unreasonable to expect an LGBTQ person to seek protection from the Iranian authorities.
In SAG & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024] EWHC 2984 (Admin), the High Court considered challenges to the Secretary of State’s determination of applications to remove no recourse to public funds (“NRPF”) conditions placed on the Claimants’ leave to remain. Each Claimant’s position was that they were at imminent risk of destitution. Several grounds of challenge were advanced:
1. The approach to the NRPF conditions was unlawful under common law
2. The approach to the NRPF conditions was a breach of s.55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009.
3. The approach to the NRPF conditions was incompatible with the Human Rights Act 1998 read with Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights.
This article considers the third ground of challenge under the Human Rights Act 1998.
Following the recent allegations of abuse surrounding former owner of Harrods, Mohamed Al-Fayed, vicarious liability has been in the news once again.
In Episode 208, Emma-Louise Fenelon speaks to Isabel McArdle about developments in this area of law since her previous episode with Rob Kellar KC in 2020 and in particular since the Supreme Court decision in Trustees of the Barry Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses v BXB [2023] UKSC 15
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