By: Rosalind English
19 December 2013 by Rosalind English
JXMX (A Child) v Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust [2013] EWHC 3956 (QB) – read judgment
Elizabeth-Anne Gumbel QC of 1 Crown Office Row represented the claimant in this case. She has nothing to do with the writing of this post.
In Part 1 on this subject, I discussed medical confidentiality and/or legal restrictions designed to protect the privacy of a mother and child. This case raises the question in a slightly different guise, namely whether the court should make an order that the claimant be identified by letters of the alphabet, and whether there should be other derogations from open justice in the guise of an anonymity order, in a claim for personal injuries by a child or protected party which comes before the court for the approval of a settlement.
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18 December 2013 by Rosalind English
AA, Re (Including: note by Mr Justice Mostyn) 4 December 2013 [2013] EWHC B24 (COP) – read note and judgment
In the matter of P (a child) 13 December 2013 [2013] EWHC 4048 (Fam) – read judgment
The full story of the “forced caesarean” that went viral a few weeks ago has been set out by Adam Wagner and others in his post “Lessons learned”. In order to set the record straight, Mostyn J has now authorised the 2012 judgment to be released, together with the verbatim transcript of the proceedings and the order made. Far from the baby being snatched from the womb of its unwilling mother at the behest of interfering social services, this is what took place:
… it was an urgent application first made at 16:16 on 23 August 2012 by the NHS Trust [not social services], supported by the clear evidence of a consultant obstetrician and the patient’s own treating consultant psychiatrist, seeking a declaration and order that it would be in the medical best interests of this seriously mentally ill and incapacitated patient, who had undergone two previous elective caesarean sections, to have this birth, the due date of which was imminent (she was 39 weeks pregnant), in the same manner.
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17 December 2013 by Rosalind English
Following David Hart’s highly popular review of Alan Paterson’s book on the Supreme Court, here’s an account of the recent public speeches of Lord Sumption, Lord Justice Laws, and Lady Hale. I apologise in advance for the length of this post, but to do justice to all three lectures it has proved necessary to quote extensively from each. There are links to the full text of the lectures, if you want to digest them over Christmas. But whether or not that prospect appeals, here is a challenge for the festive season. Lord Sumption divides judges into three categories: the “parson”, the “pragmatic realist” and the”analyst” (quoted by Professor Paterson in Final Judgment: The Last Law Lords and the Supreme Court). Which of these labels fit the respective speakers?
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11 December 2013 by Rosalind English
Kaiyam v Secretary of State for Justice and Haney v Secretary of State for Justice (9 December 2013) [2013] EWCA Civ 1587 – read judgment
The Court of Appeal has ruled that continued detention in prison following the expiry of the “minimum terms” or “tariff periods” of their indeterminate terms of imprisonment did not breach prisoners’ Convention or common law rights, but has left it to the Supreme Court to determine the substance of the Convention claims in detail.
The appellant prisoners claimed that their continued detention breached the Article 5, and in one case Article 14. The courts at first instance had been obliged to dismiss the claims under Article 5 in the light of the House of Lords decision in R(James and others) v Secretary of State for Justice [2009] UKHL 22, [2010] 1 AC 553, notwithstanding that Strasbourg subsequently held in James, Wells and Lee v United Kingdom that the House of Lords decision was wrong.
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11 December 2013 by Rosalind English
R (on the application of Hodkin and another) v Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages [2013] UKSC 77 On appeal from [2012] EWHC 3635 – read judgment
The Supreme Court has ruled, unanimously, that a Scientologist chapel is “a place of meeting for religious worship” for the purposes of section 2 of the Places of Worship Registration Act 1855, and therefore it may be licensed for the solemnisation of marriage
This was an appeal from a ruling by Ouseley J ( [2012] EWHC 3635) that a church of the Church of Scientology could not be recordable as a “place of meeting for religious worship”.
The following summary is taken from the Supreme Court’s press release. A full analysis of the case will follow shortly.
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6 December 2013 by Rosalind English
IM (Nigeria) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EWCA Civ 1561 (25 November 2013) – read judgement
The Court of Appeal has ruled that the secretary of state for the Home Department had the power to detain an immigration detainee in hospital to ensure that he received appropriate medical treatment pending his removal from the United Kingdom.
This was an appeal by a failed asylum seeker against the ruling by Ouseley J that his continued immigration detention was lawful ([2013] EWHC 3764 (Admin)).
Factual backgound
The appellant, a Nigerian national, had been refused asylum and leave to remain and was detained pending removal. He refused food and most fluids, stating further that he did not want medical treatment. His capacity to understand the significance or consequences of his decision had been tested on a number of occasions and was not in issue. An end-of-life plan had been prepared by nursing staff at the immigration removal centre. He had refused transfers to hospital, insisting on a condition of release from detention. His release had been refused despite referrals stating that he was unfit for detention at the IRC. The secretary of state had made a direction under the Immigration Act 1971 Sch.2 para.18(1) in relation to the appellant’s continued detention.
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4 December 2013 by Rosalind English
On Monday at 10.00 Eastern Time, the Nonhuman Rights Project filed suit in Fulton County Court in the state of New York on behalf of Tommy, a chimpanzee, who is being held captive in a cage in a shed at a used trailer lot in Gloversville.
According to the NRP, this is the first of three suits they are filing this week. The second was filed on Tuesday in Niagara Falls on behalf of Kiko, a chimpanzee who is deaf and living in a private home. And the third will be filed on Thursday on behalf of Hercules and Leo, who are owned by a research center and are being used in locomotion experiments at Stony Brook University on Long Island.
The organisation, led by the animal-rights lawyer Steven Wise, is using the writ of habeas corpus on behalf of the animals to ask the judge to grant the chimpanzees the right to bodily liberty and to order that they be moved to a sanctuary where they can live out their days with others of their kind in an environment as close to the wild as is possible in North America.
| Updated (10 December)|: The judge has declined the application for habeas corpus. According to Steven Wise, Judge Boniello said “that ‘I’m not going to be the one to make that leap of faith.’” Yet Boniello, who decided that chimpanzee personhood is ultimately a matter for legislatures to decide, was also “unexpectedly sympathetic”, calling their arguments sound and wishing them luck. “I’ve been in a lot of cases, and there’s not been many where the judge says, ‘Good luck.’ Usually they just say, ‘denied’.
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3 December 2013 by Rosalind English
J19 and Another v Facebook Ireland [2013] NIQB 113 – read judgment
The High Court in Northern Ireland has chosen to depart from the “robust” Strasbourg approach to service providers and their liability for comments hosted on their sites. Such liability, said the judge, was not consonant with the EC Directive on E-Commerce.
This was an application on behalf of the defendant to vary and discharge orders of injunction dated 27 September 2013 made in the case of both plaintiffs. One of the injunctions restrained “the defendant from placing on its website photographs of the plaintiff, his name, address or any like personal details until further order.” These interim injunctions were awarded pursuant to writs issued by the plaintiffs for damages by reason of the publication of photographs, information and comments on the Facebook webpages entitled “Irish Blessings”, “Ardoyne under Siege” and “Irish Banter” on 11 September 2013 and on subsequent dates.
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29 November 2013 by Rosalind English
Zoumbas (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) On appeal from the Inner House of the Court of Session, [2012] CSIH 87 [2013] UKSC 74 – read judgment
The Supreme Court has clarified the principles to be applied when considering the welfare of children in deportation cases. The following summary is based on the Supreme Court’s Press Summary.
The appellant (Mr Z) and his wife (Mrs Z) are nationals of the Republic of Congo currently living in Glasgow with their three children, now aged 9, 5 and 2. Mr Z entered the UK illegally in May 2001 using a French passport that did not belong to him. He married Mrs Z in November 2003 after she had entered the previous year using a forged French passport and both their asylum claims had been refused. Their appeals were unsuccessful . In October 2005 Mrs Z and the couple’s daughter (A) were detained and removed to Congo. For the following ten months, Mr Z was treated as an absconder having failed to report to the authorities.
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28 November 2013 by Rosalind English
National Commissioner of the South African Police Service v Southern African Human Rights Litigation Centre (485/2012) [2013] ZASCA 168 (27 November 2013) – read judgment.
In what appears to be the first case where the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) has had to consider the investigation of crimes committed extraterritorially, the Court has made it clear that the perpetrators of systematic torture – as was alleged in this case – can be held accountable in South Africa regardless of where the offending acts took place.
It had been alleged that Zimbabwean officials had on a widespread scale tortured opponents of the ruling party. The Gauteng high court had ordered the SAPS to initiate an investigation under the Implementation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Act 27 of 2002 (the ICC Act) into the alleged offences (see my previous post on that ruling).
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27 November 2013 by Rosalind English
Updated: The extended badger cull has been called off after Natural England revoked licence over failure to meet greatly reduced targets (November 28). Experts say that the failed cull may have increased TB risk for cattle.
A new challenge was filed yesterday to the badger cull extension presently under way in the South West of England.
An eight week extension to the Gloucestershire pilot cull was granted by Natural England after the initial trial period failed to reach its 70% target, and began on 23 October. Brian May’s Save Me organisation, represented by John Cooper QC, has put in an “exceptionally urgent” application for judicial review of the extension of the licence for the cull in Gloucestershire. The Secretary of State For Environment Food and Rural Affairs, DEFRA, and Natural England are named as defendants. Other interested parties are the National Farmers Union and the Badger Trust.
According to the Save Me organisation, the call for an urgent review is based on the reasoning that with the Gloucestershire extension already operative, and unless this is urgently addressed the period of the extension might elapse before a formal review can be applied.
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27 November 2013 by Rosalind English
Bull and another (Appellants) v Hall and another (Respondents) [2013] UKSC 73 (27 November 2013) – read judgment
This appeal concerned the law on discrimination. Mr and Mrs Bull, the appellants, own a private hotel in Cornwall. They are committed Christians, who sincerely believe that sexual intercourse outside traditional marriage is sinful. They operate a policy at their hotel, stated on their on-line booking form, that double bedrooms are available only to “heterosexual married couples”.
The following summary is taken from the Supreme Court’s press report. See Marina Wheeler’s post on the ruling by the Court of Appeal in this case. A full analysis of the case will follow shortly.
References in square brackets are to paragraphs in the judgment.
The respondents, Mr Hall and Mr Preddy, are a homosexual couple in a civil partnership. On 4 September 2008 Mr Preddy booked, by telephone, a double room at the appellants’ hotel for the nights of 5 and 6 September. By an oversight, Mrs Bull did not inform him of the appellants’ policy. On arrival at the hotel, Mr Hall and Mr Preddy were informed that they could not stay in a double bedroom. They found this “very hurtful”, protested, and left to find alternative accommodation.
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25 November 2013 by Rosalind English
A Local Authority v SY [2013] EWHC 3485 COP (12 November 2013] – read judgment
A judge in the Court of Protection has ruled that a man who had “exploited and took advantage” of a young woman for the purpose of seeking to bolster his immigration appeal had engaged in an invalid marriage ceremony. The man, said Keehan J, had
“deliberately targeted” the respondent because of her learning difficulties and her vulnerability.
The courts would not tolerate such “gross exploitation.”
This was an application by a local authority in the Court of Protection in respect of the capacity of the respondent, SY, to litigate and to make decisions in relation to her life.
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22 November 2013 by Rosalind English
Ignaoua, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EWCA Civ 1498 – read judgment
A certificate issued by the Home Secretary under Section 2 C of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act 1997 (the “1997 Act”), as inserted by Section 15 of the Justice and Security Act 2013 (“the 2013 Act”), did not terminate existing judicial review proceedings in relation to an exclusion direction which had been certified.
The appellant appealed against a decision concerning judicial review proceedings he had brought against the respondent secretary of state (see my previous post for the factual background of the case). These proceedings had been terminated by virtue of the 2013 Act. The appellant challenged the certificate, but Cranston J below held that the intention of Parliament was “hard-edged” and left no discretion to the judge, and meant that if an exclusion direction was certified by the secretary of state, any challenge to it had to be advanced to SIAC (the Special Immigration Appeals Commission). The question before the Court of Appeal here was whether the secretary of state’s certificate was effective to terminate the judicial review proceedings relating to the exclusion direction. At the time of the appeal, the procedural rules required for an application to SIAC were not in force.
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21 November 2013 by Rosalind English
R (on the application of London Christian Radio Ltd & Christian Communications Partnerships) v Radio Advertising Clearance Centre (Respondent) & Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Interested Party) [2013] EWCA Civ 1495 – read judgment
The ban on Christian Radio’s proposed advert seeking data on the “marginalisation of Christians” in the workplace was lawful and did not constitute an interference with free speech, the Court of Appeal has ruled. When determining whether a radio or television advertisement was “political” fur the purposes of Section 321(2)(b) of the Communications Act 2003 the court should consider the text objectively; the motives of the advertiser were irrelevant.
This was an appeal against a ruling by Silber J ([2013] EWHC 1043 (Admin)) that a proposed radio advertisement was directed towards a political end, and therefore fell foul of the prohibition on political advertising which meant that it could not be given clearance for broadcast (see my previous post on this decision).
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JXMX (A Child) v Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust [2013] EWHC 3956 (QB) – read judgment
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