Category: Case summaries

The good Samaritan doctor and the Human Tissue Act

26 June 2013 by Rosalind English

CM v The Executor of the Estate of EJ (deceased) [2013] EWHC 1680 (Fam) – read judgment

You would have thought the law would be entirely behind a person who intervenes to help a stranger in distress. Indeed most civil law countries impose a positive duty to rescue, which means that if a person finds someone in need of medical help, he or she must take all reasonable steps to seek medical care and render best-effort first aid. A famous example of this was the investigation into the photographers at the scene of Lady Diana’s fatal car accident: they were suspected of violation of the French law of “non-assistance à personne en danger” (deliberately failing to provide assistance to a person in danger), which can be punished by up to 5 years imprisonment and a fine of up to 70,000 euros. But the position in common law countries like the UK and the United States is completely different: you can watch a child drown and not be held to account.

Of course no good citizen would do such a thing and in this case the claimant, a medical doctor, went out of her way to try to save the life of someone in extremis. She was driving home, off duty, in South East London, when she saw a body lying motionless on the pavement.
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Sacking GP from government drugs advisor post for ‘anti-gay’ views was lawful

25 June 2013 by Alasdair Henderson

R (Dr Hans-Christian Raabe) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EWHC 1736 (Admin) – read judgment

Dr Hans-Christian Raabe lost his judicial review challenge to the revocation of his appointment as the GP member of the Government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). His appointment was revoked less than a month after he had accepted an offer to join the ACMD, as a result of certain views about homosexuality expressed in a paper he had co-written in Canada some 6 years earlier.

This case deals with a heady cocktail of controversial issues, ranging from same-sex marriage to the level of crystal meth use in gay clubs, and from paedophilia to the ostracising of Christians because of their religious beliefs. Indeed, it hits so many hot-button issues at once that it is very surprising it has not yet received much media coverage, despite the judgment being handed down on 20 June.

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A1P1 and property rights in the Supreme Court again

25 June 2013 by David Hart KC

Cusack v. London Borough of Harrow  [2013] UKSC, 19 June 2013 read judgment 

This is the tale of how a solicitor from Harrow ended up litigating about his off-street parking in the Supreme Court – and reached for Article 1 of Protocol 1 (A1P1) of ECHR, by way of a second string to his bow. Not his choice, as he had won in the Court of Appeal on other grounds. But his failure on the point reminds us that in the majority of cases A1P1 is a difficult argument to bring home.

Mr Cusack had been parking his car in front of his premises since the late 1960s. He got temporary planning permission for his offices in 1973, but hung on when this expired and got established planning rights in 1976.

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An ABC on proportionality – with Bank Mellat as our primer

22 June 2013 by David Hart KC

Bank Mellat v HM Treasury [2013] UKSC 39 (see judgment)

My post of earlier this week explained why the majority of the Supreme Court struck down a direction telling all financial institutions not to deal with this Iranian Bank. The legal ground (involving, as Lord Sumption described it, “an exacting analysis of the factual evidence in defence of the measure” [20]) was that the direction was “disproportionate”. The judgments (particularly the dissenting one of Lord Reed) tell us a lot about the scope of proportionality. And there is a good deal more to it than there might at first sight appear.

So it may be worth doing a bit of a bluffers guide, hand in hand with Lord Reed.

The concept arises in human rights law and in EU law. Its ECHR and EU incarnations derive from German administrative law, but its development in English law shows strong common-law influences. It applies in many different contexts, and the intensity of the review required critically depends on that context as well as the right being interfered with. So it is no simple thing to explain, but Lord Reed at [68] – [76] distils the main elements.

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Supreme Court – Measures against Iranian bank unlawful, and the secret hearing ruling

19 June 2013 by David Hart KC

Bank Mellat v HM Treasury [2013] UKSC 38 (CMP: see judgment) and 39 (main: see judgment)

Two sets of judgments today from a 9-judge Supreme Court in the Bank Mellat case. The first explains why the Court adopted a secret procedure in the absence of the Bank (i.e. a Closed Material Procedure) but added that the whole palaver in fact added nothing to their knowledge. The second concludes that financial restrictions imposed in 2009 on an Iranian Bank which effectively excluded it from the UK financial market were arbitrary and irrational and were also procedurally unfair. 

The right to be on the beach again – A1P1 and retrospectivity

16 June 2013 by David Hart KC

The Queen (on the application of Newhaven Port and Properties Limited) v East Sussex County Council and Newhaven Town Council (Interested Party)  [2013] EWCA Civ 673, 276, 14 June 2013 read judgment 

This case came before the Court of Appeal earlier this year (read judgment of April 2013, and Rosalind English’s earlier post giving the background), when the landowner Port’s attempts to exclude members of the public from West Beach, Newhaven were unsuccessful. They were defeated by the beach being registered as a “village green” – improbable though that description may sound to those not versed in this arcane bit of the law. The lawfulness of this registration in turn depended on it being established that members of the public had used the beach for at least 20 years “as of right” – i.e. “without force, without stealth and without permission” – an age-old lawyers’ mantra that has mercifully been translated from the original Latin in recent times.

But the earlier hearing before the CA left over for determination one issue, the Port’s contention that they had been deprived of property rights in breach of Article 1 of Protocol 1 (A1P1) of ECHR, because of a retrospective change of the law adverse to them. This is what last week’s decision is about.

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Human genes may not be patented, but synthesised ones can, rules US Supreme Court

13 June 2013 by Rosalind English

Association for Molecular Pathology et al v Myriad Genetics Inc, et al, United States Supreme Court 13 June 2013 – read judgment. The headlines are misleading. Myriad Genetics has lost some, but not all of its patent protection as a result of this final ruling in the long running litigation concerning the company’s BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 breast cancer gene patents.  According to the American Council on Science and Health, the Court’s decision is

a groundbreaking moment in the history of biotechnology, and a case that will surely rank among the most noteworthy biomedical decisions of our time.

I have posted here, here and here on previous stages in the Myriad patent case, in the United States and Australia, so will not set out the facts again (although for anyone who is interested, the Supreme Court judgment provides a superbly clear explanation of the molecular biology underlying the issues).
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Court lifts anonymity order in David McGreavy case

3 June 2013 by Rosalind English

M, R(on the application of) v The Parole Board and another [2013] EWHC 1360 (Admin) – read judgment

Reporting restrictions on proceedings concerning a life prisoner should be discharged since the public interest in allowing media organisations to publish reports outweighed the prisoner’s human rights.

The claimant had been convicted of the brutal murder of three infant children in 1973. Subsequent to his incarceration in open prison, his movements had come to the attention of the press. Inmates made threats and the claimant was moved to secure conditions.  When he sought judicial review of a decision by the parole board in 2011 (declining his return to open conditions), the judge granted an order restricting reporting of  the claimant’s identity, the details of his offences and his current location.  In this hearing, various media organisations intervened to request the discharge this order.
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Death penalty legal funding refusal: Appeal court confirms limits of Human Rights Act

29 May 2013 by Matthew Flinn

R (on the application of Sandiford) v Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs [2013] 168 (Admin) – read judgment

On 22 April 2013 the Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in refusing to pay for a lawyer to assist Lindsay Sandiford as she faces the death penalty for drug offences in Indonesia. Last Wednesday, they handed down the reasons for their decision.

On 19 May 2012 Lindsay Sandiford was arrested at Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali following the discovery of almost five kilograms of cocaine in the lining of her suitcase. A number of southeast Asian countries take a notoriously hard line on drugs offences, and following her conviction on 19 December 2012, Ms Sandiford was sentenced to death. Many media outlets have reported that in Indonesia, death sentences are generally carried out by a firing squad.

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Electronic plagiarism? The dangers of the cut-and-paste

26 May 2013 by David Hart KC

Crinion v. IG Markets [2013] EWCA (Civ) 587  read judgment

and R (o.t.a. Mustafa) v. The Office of the Independent Adjudicator, Queen Mary College Interested Party [2013] EWHC 1379 (Admin) read judgment

A judge hears a case and accepts one party’s version. That party provides a convincing closing speech (in a Word document) which the judge lifts, makes some modifications, and circulates as his judgment. 

What is wrong with that? Put it another way, does the judge have to re-invent the wheel by paraphrasing the arguments of the parties?

What is wrong is the appearance that the judge has not really engaged with the arguments of the losing party – as the Court of Appeal emphatically pointed out in their judgment.

My second case reminds us what happens when students do this.

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Bipolar patient has capacity to decide to terminate pregnancy

24 May 2013 by Rosalind English

Re SB (A patient; capacity to consent to termination) [2013] EWHC 1417 (COP) 21 May 2013 – read judgment

Sidney Chawatama of 1 Crown Office Row represented the husband of the patient in this case. He has nothing to do with the writing of this post. 

The patient in this case was a 37 year old highly intelligent graduate who worked in IT. For the past 8 years she presented with symptoms which were diagnosed as those of bi-polar disorder. She had been detained under compulsory or similar powers at various times in Italy, in France and here in England.

These proceedings were issued in the Court of Protection because the mother concerned was “very strongly” requesting a termination and giving her consent to it. The issue related to her capacity. Section 1(2) of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 is very clear and provides as follows: “A person must be assumed to have capacity unless it is established that he lacks capacity.” Accordingly, unless it is established, on a balance of probability, that the mother does not have capacity to make the decision that she undoubtedly has made, her autonomy as an adult to request and consent to the proposed abortion procedure is preserved.
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UK Uncut loses: Taxman’s Goldman Sachs deal “not a glorious episode”, but lawful

22 May 2013 by Alasdair Henderson

UK Uncut Legal Action Ltd v. (1) Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and (2) Goldman Sachs – read judgment

Tax avoidance has hit the news again, with Apple currently facing questions from the US Senate about its exploitation of Irish company law loopholes and David Cameron writing to offshore tax havens to push for more transparency over tax rules. As it happens, the High Court has just handed down a ruling in a case which raises many of the same issues.

The campaign group UK Uncut brought a judicial review claim against HMRC. They argued that it was unlawful for HMRC to reach a confidential settlement in 2010 with the investment bank Goldman Sachs over a multi-million pound unpaid tax bill arising out of a failed tax avoidance scheme. Mr Justice Nicol held that HMRC’s decision was not unlawful, but criticised the actions of HMRC officials and HMRC have acknowledged that the manner in which the settlement was agreed involved several mistakes.

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Conscientious objection to abortion: Catholic midwives win appeal

3 May 2013 by Alasdair Henderson

Doogan and Wood v. NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde Health Board [2013] CSIH 36 – read judgment here

The Inner House of the Court of Session (the Scottish civil court of appeal) ruled last week that two midwives from Glasgow could not be required to delegate to, supervise or support staff on their labour ward who were involved in abortions. 

The ruling makes it clear that the conscientious objection provision in s.4 of the Abortion Act 1967 has very broad scope. This probably means that the General Medical Council (GMC), the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) and the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) will all need to change their guidance on the subject, since the existing versions take a much narrower view. This judgment affects England and Wales as well as Scotland (since the Act covers all three countries), but not Northern Ireland.

The facts of the case, and the original decision of Lady Smith in the Outer House of the Court of Session are covered in our previous blog post here.

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Guidance from the Supreme Court on human rights damages

2 May 2013 by Rosalind English

Faulkner, R (on the application of ) v  Secretary of State for Justice and another [2013] UKSC 23 – read judgment

The Supreme Court has taken a fresh look at what is meant by the Human Rights Act exhortation to take Strasbourg jurisprudence “into account” when fashioning remedies for violations of Convention rights, in this case the right not to be arbitrarily detained under Article 5.

These appeals concerned the circumstances in which a prisoner serving a life sentence or an indeterminate sentence of imprisonment for public protection (“IPP”), who has served the minimum period specified for the purposes of retribution and deterrence (the “tariff”), and whose further detention is justified only if it is necessary for the protection of the public, should be awarded damages for delay in reviewing the need for further detention following the expiry of the tariff.

Appellate courts do not ordinarily interfere with an award of damages simply because they would have awarded a different figure if they had tried the case. However, as the Supreme Court was being asked in this case to give guidance on quantum, the Court determined the level of the award that would adequately compensate the appellants.
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Genetic testing of children up for adoption

27 April 2013 by Rosalind English

Y and Z (Children), 25 April 2013 [2013] EWHC 953 (Fam) – read judgment

Having children is a lottery. No judge or court in the land would sanction the regulation of childbearing, however feckless  the parents, unsuitable the conditions for childrearing, or unpromising the genetic inheritance.

Adoption on the other hand is stringently regulated, set about with obstacles for prospective parents, and strictly scrutinised by an army of authorities backed up by specialist family courts and a battery of laws, statutory instruments and guidance papers. Usually the filtering is in one direction only: the suitability of the parents to the child or children up for adoption. But sometimes it goes the other way, and this case raises the fascinating and somewhat futuristic question of whether children’s chance of finding a suitable home might be increased by genetic testing.

The circumstances were somewhat exceptional here, since the local authority had ascertained from the biological father  of the two young boys in question that they might have a chance of inheriting a rare genetic disorder of the central nervous system. Huntington’s Chorea is caused by a single gene mutation on chromosome IV and causes damage of the nerve cells and areas of the brain which in due course leads to severe physical, mental and emotional deterioration. Anyone whose parent has the disease is born with a fifty per cent chance of inheriting the gene. Anyone who inherits the gene will, at some stage, develop the disease. 
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