Category: CONVENTION RIGHTS
2 July 2013 by David Hart KC
Bedford v. Bedfordshire County Council, 21 June 2013, Jay J – read judgment
On 29 May 2004, Bradley Bedford, then aged 13, was beaten senseless by one AH, then 15, whom he had the misfortune to encounter entirely by chance near the seaside in Torbay. AH was in a children’s home there which was contracted to the Defendant Council; AH was a “looked after” child under section 20 of the Children Act 1989. Bradley sued the Council for failing to protect him. His claim was limited to one under the Human Rights Act, and Article 8 ECHR in particular.
Jay J dismissed the claim on the grounds that (a) it was brought too late; (b) there was not a real and immediate risk of harm to Bradley of which the Council should have been aware; (c) even if there was, the local authority took reasonable steps to eliminate or substantially reduce any risk. All these rulings are of some interest.
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30 June 2013 by Martin Downs
Pride is celebrated this weekend in London, New York and – most especially – San Francisco where, even as I write, same sex couples are being married after the ruling of the US Supreme Court on Proposition 8. Appropriately, Kris Perry, one of the litigants before the Court was the first to be wed. Matthew Flinn has already posted on this and the Court decision on the Defence of Marriage Act.
It is irresistible to take stock at moments such as these.
France is celebrating its first same sex marriages, Uruguay and New Zealand are close on its tail and the Bill to effect the same in England and Wales should confront its final hurdle on 15 July.
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29 June 2013 by Matthew Flinn
Hollingsworth v Perry – No. 12–144 – Read judgment
United States v Windsor – No. 12–307 – Read judgment
In rulings that have the potential to influence the jurisprudence of courts around the world, the Supreme Court of the United States has handed down two landmark decisions pertaining to the issue of same-sex marriage.
The right of gay and lesbian couples to wed remains one of the most controversial and debated civil rights issues of our time. However, the ground has been shifting with increasing rapidity in recent years and months. The direction of change is clear. There are now fifteen countries which permit or will permit same-sex marriages, including most recently Uruguay, New Zealand and France. With bills steadily progressing through the Parliamentary process, there is a strong possibility that England, Wales and Scotland may soon be added to the list.
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26 June 2013 by Guest Contributor
Tan & Anor v Law & Anor (2013) – Currently available on Lawtel 25/6/2013 and Westlaw, BAILII link to follow
The absence of legal representation for defendants to an action for debt who contended they could not speak English resulted in the High Court granting an application that the trial be adjourned for a second time. The judgment is a good example of the interaction of Article 6 ECHR (right to a fair trial) with the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR).
The decision by Judge Burrell QC obviously turns on its own facts. But the absence of legal aid, the rise in litigants in person, and the increasing number of persons in this country for whom English is not their first language (or indeed their language at all) mean that this is not likely to be the last such case.
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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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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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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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20 June 2013 by Rosalind English
Smith and Others (Appellants) v The Ministry of Defence (Respondent) and other appeals – read judgment and our previous post for summary of the facts
So, the Supreme Court has refused to allow these claims to be struck out on the principle of combat immunity. It has also asserted that jurisdiction for the purpose of an Article 2 right to life claim can extend to non-Convention countries, and that the state can owe a positive duty to protect life, even in a situation of armed combat.
This ruling deserves close attention not least because it takes common law negligence and Article 2 into an area which is very largely uncharted by previous authority. Lord Mance does not mince his words in his dissent, predicting that yesterday’s ruling will lead, inevitably, to the “judicialisation of war”. Lord Carnwath is similarly minded; in this case, he says, the Court is being asked to authorise an extension of the law of negligence (as indeed of Article 2), into a new field, without guidance from “any authority in the higher courts, in this country or any comparable jurisdiction, in which the state has been held liable for injuries sustained by its own soldiers in the course of active hostilities.” Lord Wilson also dissented on this point.
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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 saga started when on 9 October 2009 the Treasury made a direction under Schedule 7 of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 requiring all persons operating in the financial sector not to have any commercial dealings with Bank Mellat. The Treasury said that the Bank had connections with Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programme.
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17 June 2013 by David Hart KC
Elvanite Full Circle v. AMEC Earth & Environmental (UK) Ltd [2013] EWHC 1643 (TCC), Coulson J read judgment
The Jackson reforms, which are designed to stop lawyers spending too much of their clients’ or their opponents’ money, are still but young, and therefore not yielding much in the way of decided cases. But there were some pilot schemes which are very similar, and this case about one such scheme (in the Technology & Construction Court) is an interesting, and tough, example of why costs budgets must be taken seriously.
Elvanite claimed that AMEC had given them negligent planning advice about waste management. Coulson J dismissed the claim. AMEC sought and got their costs. But, from the judge’s judgment on costs, it seems unlikely that they will recover more than 50% of their actual costs. Why?
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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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14 June 2013 by Guest Contributor
ZZ v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EUECJ C-300/11 – Read judgment
The European Court of Justice has, in recent days, handed down a judgment that hits several hot buttons: UK immigration law, EU human rights, secret evidence, and suspicions of terrorism. In ZZ the Court has had to rule on the use of secret evidence before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).
Mr ZZ is an Algerian citizen. However, of crucial importance to his case is that he is also a French citizen, and therefore as an EU citizen, he is entitled to travel to and live the UK. Mr ZZ’s wife is a UK citizen and he was resident in the UK for a over a decade until 2005. In that year he travelled to Algeria but, upon return, was refused admission to the UK on national security grounds.
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12 June 2013 by Adam Wagner
12 June 2013 may go down in legal history. For it was the first time a national newspaper’s main headline was about the launch of a legal textbook. In a paradoxical explosion of free publicity for said book, the Daily Express reported that a new online guide to European asylum and immigration has caused “outrage” for helping “migrants claim British benefits”.
As you might expect, the article is as full of arrant nonsense as the new guide – which can be downloaded for free here – is full of useful information. Nonsense like this:
In a list of examples of past cases, it even cites Islamist cleric Abu Qatada’s successful challenge under human rights laws against Home Office attempts to send him back to Jordan to face terror charges
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11 June 2013 by Martin Downs
This was the question confronting Judge Hegarty QC in, McMillan v Airedale NHS Foundation Trust [2013] EWHC 1504 QB – read judgment
The answer of the Court was that clear and express words in the contract would be required in order to confer a power to increase a sanction on an Appeal Panel.
The Claimant was a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist who was involved in a serious untoward incident when a patient suffered significant and uncontrolled bleeding in the aftermath of a successful caesarean delivery which necessitated emergency surgery to remove her spleen. In the aftermath, the Trust’s Medical Director formed the view that the Claimant had not been honest about the care of the patient and had, in fact, given conflicting accounts. This was also the conclusion of a disciplinary hearing which then issued a final written warning and referred the case to the GMC. The Claimant appealed.
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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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Bedford v. Bedfordshire County Council, 21 June 2013, Jay J – read judgment
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