Category: Case summaries
8 November 2013 by Rosalind English
AB, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EWHC 3453 (Admin) – read judgment
Here unfolds a story of sophisticated abuse of the asylum system in this country by an individual skilfully shamming persecution. Nor did the security agents who escorted the claimant on his departure come up smelling of roses: it emerged during the course of these proceedings that they had falsified a room clearance certificate to boost the defence case.
The judgment also points up the potentially far-reaching effect of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and how this might render all the handwringing about the European Convention on Human Rights irrelevant, and a home grown Bill of Rights otiose.
Factual background
The claimant, whom Mostyn J describes as “a highly intelligent, manipulative, unscrupulous and deceitful person”, arrived in this country in 2005, was refused asylum and was deported in 2010. He sought judicial review of the Home Secretary’s decision to refuse his claim and return him to his state of embarkation, “Country A” (so designated because there was a reporting restriction order made in the original proceedings anonymising both the claimant, his country of origin, and the political organisation of which he claimed to be a member. Mostyn J “reluctantly” went along with that order in this proceedings, since neither of the parties applied to have it reviewed.)
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7 November 2013 by Rosalind English
CF v Security Service and others and Mohamed v Foreign and Commonwealth Office and others [[2013] EWHC 3402 (QB) – read judgment
The High Court has today made the first court ruling on the use of the Justice and Security Act 2013 in a civil claim for damages.
In a ruling on preliminary issues, Irwin J made a declaration that the government can make a closed material application to the court in this case. The Court also ruled on PII. The following summary is based on the Court’s press release.
Factual background
CF and Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed are both British citizens of Somali descent. CF left the United Kingdom in 2009, Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed having left in 2007. They were both detained by the Somaliland Authorities on 14 January 2011. They were then detained until removal to the UK on 14 March 2011. Each claims that they were unlawfully detained, tortured and mistreated during the period of detention in Somaliland.
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6 November 2013 by Guest Contributor
R (on the application of Ingenious Media Holdings plc and Patrick McKenna v Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs [2013] EWHC 3258 (Admin) – read judgment
Sales J has rejected an application for judicial review by Ingenious Media Holdings plc and Patrick McKenna, who complained that senior officials in HMRC had identified them in “off the record” briefings.
Ingenious Media is an investment and advisory group which promotes film investment schemes which allow participators to take advantage of certain tax reliefs and exemptions. HMRC has long been fighting to close down these “film schemes”, with some success (see the Eclipse 35 appeal).
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22 October 2013 by
R (Antoniou) v (1) Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust; (2) Secretary of State for Health; (3) NHS England [2013] EWHC 3055 (Admin) – read judgment
Where a patient, detained in hospital under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act 1983, takes their own life, Article 2 imposes procedural obligations on the State to investigate the circumstances of the death. These obligations are fulfilled by a coroner’s inquest. Unlike in prison and police station deaths, there need not be any independent investigation system prior to the inquest stage, and nor does Article 2 require one.
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18 October 2013 by Rosalind English
F v F [2013] EWHC 2683 (Fam) – read judgment
The High Court has ruled that two sisters must receive the MMR vaccine against their wishes and the wishes of their mother.
This was an application by the father for a declaration and a specific issue order concerning his daughters both receive the MMR vaccination. This was opposed by their mother.
Background
Following the breakdown of their parents’ marriage, the girls (aged 11 and 15 respectively) lived with their mother, and the father had contact every alternate weekend and half the school holidays. After publication of the now discredited paper published by Dr Andrew Wakefield in the Lancet connecting the MMR vaccine with autism, both parents agreed not to have a booster arranged for the older daughter (who had been inoculated against MMR at birth) and to forego a vaccination for the other daughter completely.
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15 October 2013 by Rosalind English
Benkharbouche v Embassy of the Republic of Sudan (Jurisdictional Points: State Immunity) [2013] UKEAT 0401_12_0410 4 October 2013 – read judgment
These appeals, heard at the same time, raise the question whether someone employed in the UK by a foreign diplomatic mission as a member of its domestic staff may bring a claim to assert employment rights against the country whose mission it is, despite being met by an assertion of State Immunity under the State Immunity Act 1978. The EAT regarded itself bound by the supremacy of EU law to disapply the SIA, despite the fact that it had no jurisdiction to do so under the 1998 Human Rights Act.
This is the first time that the full force of the rights contained in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms has made itself felt in a domestic dispute between private parties (although the embassies themselves are state institutions, as an employment dispute the matter is one of private law only). If upheld on appeal, this ruling will have consequences that extend far beyond the somewhat esoteric area of the immunity of diplomatic missions, and will make the effect of the Human Rights Act look puny by comparison (as pointed out by Joshua Rozenberg in his post on this case).
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14 October 2013 by Rosalind English
Delfi AS v Estonia (Application no. 64569/09) 10 October 2013 – read judgment
This case concerned the liability of an Internet news portal for offensive comments that were posted by readers below one of its online news articles. The following summary is based on the Strasbourg Court’s press release.
The applicant company owns one of the largest internet news sites in Estonia. In January 2006, Delfi published an article on its webpage about a ferry company. It discussed the company’s decision to change the route its ferries took to certain islands. This had caused ice to break where ice roads could have been made in the near future. As a result, the opening of these roads – a cheaper and faster connection to the islands compared to the ferry services – was postponed for several weeks. Below the article, readers were able to access the comments of other users of the site. Many readers had written highly offensive or threatening posts about the ferry operator and its owner.
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14 October 2013 by Rosalind English
Cossey, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Justice [2013] EWHC 3029 (Admin) – read judgment
The High Court has dismissed an “absolutely meritless” claim by a prisoner that, in serving the non-tariff part of his sentence, he should be afforded all the Convention rights enjoyed by prisoners on remand or those serving time for civil offences such as contempt of court. As he had been deprived of the full panoply of rights, he said, he was a victim of discrimination contrary to Article 14.
This, said Mostyn J, was
The sort of claim that gives the Convention, incorporated into our domestic law by the Human Rights Act 1998, a bad name and which furnishes its critics with ammunition to shoot it down.
Were the key architect of the Convention, Lord Kilmuir, alive today, continued the judge, “he would be amazed to be told that a claim for violation of Article 14 was being advanced on the facts of this case.”
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14 October 2013 by Isabel McArdle
Secretary of State for the Home Department v Al -Jedda [2013] UKSC 62 – Read judgment / press summary
In late 2007, the Secretary of State for the Home Department made an order depriving Mr Al Jedda, who had been granted British citizenship in 2000, of his citizenship, under the British Nationality Act 1981. Section 40(4) of the Act prohibits the deprivation of nationality where the effect would be to render the person stateless.
Not being a citizen of any state can have profound effects on a person’s ability to live a normal life, including being unable to obtain travel documents and facing difficulty settling and obtaining work, education and healthcare. However, the Secretary of State considered that taking away Mr Al Jedda’s nationality was conducive to the public good.
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9 October 2013 by Rosalind English
MF (Nigeria) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EWCA Civ 1192 – read judgment
In what circumstances can a foreign criminal resist deportation on the basis of his right to family life under Article 8 of the Convention? Until 2012 this question was governed entirely by judge-made case law. Then rules 398, 399 and 399A were introduced into the Immigration Rules HC 395. I have posted previously on the interpretation of these rules here and here.
The rules introduced for the first time a set of criteria by reference to which the impact of Article 8 in criminal deportation cases was to be assessed. The intention of the legislature in introducing these rules was to state how the balance should be struck between the public interest and the individual right to family life:
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2 October 2013 by Rosalind English
C-363/12: A Government Department and the Board of Management of a Community School – read AG Wahl’s opinion
Case C‑167/12 : C.D. v S.T. – read AG Kokott’s opinion
Two opinions from Luxembourg on exactly the same issue, with diametrically opposed conclusions. AG Wahl (male) says, in brief, that the Pregnancy Workers Directive does what it says on the tin. It does not apply to non-pregnant employees, even though one of these might be an “intended mother” i.e. a woman who for medical reasons cannot carry a pregnancy to term, who has commissioned a surrogacy. AG Kokott (female) concludes firmly that the Pregnancy Workers Directive was designed to protect the relationship between mothers and their unborn or newborn, whether naturally produced or arranged by surrogacy. These opinions were published on the same day, with no mention in either of the other case. We can only conclude that the AGs read each other’s drafts, and decided to go to press with them together, leaving the CJEU to reconcile them in some way or another.
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26 September 2013 by Rosalind English
M (Children) [2013] EWCA Civ 1147, 20 September 2013 – read judgement
The Court of Appeal has taken the unusual step of reversing a denial of contact order, by reviewing the question of the proportionality of the order in relation to the children’s right to family life under Article 8.
The appellant father appealed against the refusal of his application for contact with his three young sons. He had a history of violence and previous criminal convictions all but one of which, though distant in time, related to violent behaviour, including causing grievous bodily harm with intent. Following repeated episodes of abuse, which was often witnessed by the boys, the mother had left the family home with the children and had taken up accommodation in a women’s refuge. She voiced fears of their abduction out of the jurisdiction and her own personal safety to the extent of “honour based” violence and death at the hands or instigation of the father. When he applied for contact Cushing J found that the father had minimised his behaviour and blamed the mother as the victim of his violence. She concluded that he had failed to show any lasting benefit from therapy and his behaviour was likely to destabilise the children’s home and security, which was provided by the mother.
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24 September 2013 by Rosalind English
R (on the application of R) v Chief Constable [2013] EWHC 2864 (Admin) 24 September 2013 – read judgment
The High Court has ruled that it is not a breach of the right to private life to request DNA samples from those who were convicted of serious offences before it became commonplace to take samples for the production of DNA profiles for the investigation of crime.
Background Facts
The claimant was asked, by reason of his previous convictions, to provide a DNA sample under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act to enable the police compare the his DNA profile with those held by the police in connection with unsolved crime. He refused to give the sample when it was sought initially, so he was sent a letter requiring him to attend at a police station to provide the sample on pain of arrest. He applied for judicial review of this requirement, arguing that it was an unlawful incursion on his right to privacy under Article 8.
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24 September 2013 by Matthew Flinn
Wright v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis [2013] EWHC 2739 (QB) – Read Judgment
Image via Richard Millett’s Blog
The High Court has found that the containment of a protester in a designated protesting pen for seventy five minutes was not unlawful at common law, nor under the Human Rights Act 1998.
On 30th March 2011, a seminar marking sixty years of British-Israeli diplomatic relations took place in Chatham House in St James’ Square, London. The Israeli President, Mr Shimon Peres, was to be in attendance, and a group of protesters from the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign took the opportunity to demonstrate outside the seminar venue.
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18 September 2013 by Rosalind English
R (on the application of) Christopher Prothero v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EWHC 2830 (Admin) 18 September 2013 – read judgment
This was a challenge to regulations introduced in 2012 under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 which require a person on the Sex Offenders Register to provide details of bank, debit or credit card accounts held by him. The claimant sought a declaration that this particular regulation was incompatible with his right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The last time the notification requirements under the 2003 Act came under attack, the Supreme court held that they were capable of causing significant interference with the Article 8 rights of an offender on the register (R (F)(a Child)) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] UKSC 17) – see our post on that case and its consequences.
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AB, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EWHC 3453 (Admin) – read judgment
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