Search Results for: prisoners/page/58/[2001] EWCA Civ 1546
3 April 2020 by Guest Contributor
Whittington Hospital NHS Trust v XX [2020] UKSC 14
The Supreme Court has held that a defendant hospital trust must pay for the cost of a commercial surrogacy arrangement abroad despite such arrangements being unlawful in the UK.
As a result of admitted negligence the claimant developed avoidable cervical cancer. The resulting treatment destroyed her ability to bear children herself, a truly devastating blow to her amongst many other ghastly consequences of the repeated fault of the Trust.
Prior to the treatment, and in anticipation of its inevitable consequences, eight mature eggs had been collected and stored. The claimant came from a large family and had always wished to have four children. Her preference was to enter into a commercial surrogacy arrangement in the USA and she sought the cost of doing so as damages. She sought to use the stored eggs but also to rely on surrogacy with donor eggs fertilised by her husband’s sperm. The defendant argued that it should not have to pay damages to reflect the cost of UK surrogacy, the use of donor eggs and of the American commercial surrogacy.
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5 December 2011 by Melina Padron
Welcome back to the human rights roundup. Our full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here.
by Melinda Padron
In the news
The Government’s Green Paper on secret evidence
In my previous roundup, I mentioned that the government had published a Green Paper which proposed the extension of “closed material procedures”. Last week, the blogger Obiter J wrote a three-part detailed piece about the Green Paper and its proposals, which you can read here and here. In our blog, Adam Wagner pondered whether more trials should be held in secret, whilst Angus McCullough QC expanded on Adam’s piece, offering his comment from the perspective of an experienced Special Advocate.
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19 May 2016 by David Hart KC
PJS v. News Group Newspapers Ltd![]()
[2016] UKSC 26 – read judgment
The Supreme Court has this morning continued the interim injunction concerning PJS’s extra-marital goings-on until after the full trial of the claim – after a rollercoaster ride for his claim through the courts.
Cranston J refused an injunction on 15 January 2016.
The Court of Appeal granted it on 22 January (Matt Flinn’s post here), and then discharged it on 18 April due to the effect of subsequent publicity which they said had led the injunction to have no remaining purpose (my post here). The subsequent publicity was in US newspapers and via the internet (with, as Lord Toulson commented, some fairly obvious twitter hashtags involved.)
The Supreme Court swiftly convened a hearing on 21 April, leading to today’s judgment reversing the Court of Appeal.
The decision (4-1) was not unanimous, with Lord Toulson dissenting. There are three concurring judgments (all agreed to by the majority).
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4 July 2014 by Guest Contributor
Rutherford and Ors v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2014] EWHC 1613 (Admin) – Read judgement here.
At the end of May, the High Court ruled that the reduction in Housing Benefit under Regulation B13 of Housing Benefit (Amendment) Regulations – commonly dubbed “the bedroom tax” – did not unlawfully discriminate against a family with a disabled child requiring an additional bedroom for overnight careers because the shortfall was covered by discretionary housing payments.
The case involved three Claimants: Mr and Mrs Rutherford and their 14-year-old grandson Warren. Warren suffers from a profound disability requiring 24-hour care from at least two people. Mr and Mrs Rutherford need the assistance of two paid careers for two nights a week. The family live in a three-bedroom bungalow rented from a housing association and specifically adapted to meet Warren’s needs. Mr and Mrs Rutherford sleep in one room, Warren in another, and a third room is used as a bedroom for overnight carers and to store medical equipment.
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15 February 2015 by Guest Contributor
Benkharbouche & Anor v Embassy of the Republic of Sudan [2015] EWCA Civ 33, 5th February 2015 – read judgment
This judgment concerned the conjoined appeals of Ms. Benkharbouche and Ms. Janah which arose from employment law claims brought against, respectively, the Sudanese and Libyan embassies. Certain of their claims, such as those for unfair dismissal, were founded on domestic law. Others, such as those under the Working Time Regulations 1998, fell within the scope of EU law. All were met with pleas of state immunity under the State Immunity Act 1978.
The Court of Appeal’s judgment provides a neat illustration of the relative remedial potency, on the one hand of human rights claims based on the European Convention on Human Rights by way of the Human Rights Act 1998, and on the other, those based on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights via the doctrine of ‘horizontal direct effect’.
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21 February 2018 by Matthew Flinn
Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis v DSD and Anor [2018] UKSC 11 – Read Judgment
In an important decision for UK human rights law, the Supreme Court confirmed on 21st February 2018 that the police have a positive operational duty – owed to the individual victims of certain crimes – to conduct an effective investigation under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The decision stems from a claim brought by two victims of John Worboys, a London black cab driver who committed “a legion of sexual offences on women” between 2003 and 2008.
The victims, identified in the proceedings as DSD and NBV, sought damages from the Metropolitan Police, due to various failures in the course of investigating their complaints. The action was brought under sections 7 and 8 of the Human Rights Act (“HRA”) 1998, which enables claims for damages to be pursued in the English Courts where there has been a breach of an article of the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”). This approach was taken because a “standard” action in the tort of negligence would be doomed to failure. There is a long line of authority, still holding firm (although regularly probed and challenged), which provides that police are immune from suit due to negligent failures in the conduct of many of their public functions, largely for policy reasons.
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30 April 2010 by Rachel Marcus
OM (ALGERIA) v SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT [2010] EWHC 65 (Admin) – Read judgment
The claimant’s detention pending deportation was unlawful where (1) the Secretary of State had failed to take account of the guidance on immigration detention, which indicated that the mentally ill were usually unsuitable for detention and (2) the Secretary of State had failed to notify the Claimant of his right of appeal once a Court of Appeal had, in a similar case, determined such a right to exist.
Summary
The Claimant, having entered the UK illegally in 1996, had a string of criminal convictions and a Class A drug habit. Although he had claimed asylum in 1999 the whole of his claim was found by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (“AIT”) to be a fabrication. He had married and had two young children in the UK. The most significant issue, however, was his diagnosis in 2003 as suffering from schizophrenia.
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27 September 2018 by Guest Contributor
Raychaudhuri v General Medical Council [2018] EWCA Civ 2027
On 14th September 2018 the Court of Appeal allowed an appeal by a doctor against a finding that his fitness to practice was impaired by reason of dishonesty.
This case concerned professional disciplinary proceedings against the appellant, Dr Hemmay Raychaudhuri. A complaint had been made in relation to how the appellant had filled in a form to record the medical examination of a child patient. This complaint was referred to a Medical Practitioners Tribunal (MPT). Assessing the scope for misunderstanding between the appellant and other medical staff, the MPT upheld the charge of ‘misleading actions’ rather than ‘dishonest actions’. As such there was no impairment of his ability to practice as a doctor.
The General Medical Council (GMC), however, alleged dishonesty on the part of the appellant. The GMC appealed to the High Court in reliance on section 40A Medical Act 1983. This stipulates the conditions under which the General Council may challenge a decision of an MPT if it believes a disciplinary decision made under section 35D does not sufficiently protect the public.
In the High Court, Sweeney J followed the decision of the Divisional Court in General Medical Council v Jagjivan [2017] EWHC, which held that the High Court had jurisdiction to hear an appeal by the GMC against a ruling by an MPT. He substituted the MPT’s finding to declare that the appellant had in fact behaved dishonestly and that therefore his fitness to practice was impaired.
There were three grounds of appeal before the Court of Appeal.
- The High Court has no jurisdiction under Section 40 to hear an appeal by the GMC against a finding by an MPT that a doctor’s fitness to practice is not impaired. This was an invitation to overrule Jagjivan;
- The High Court was wrong to substitute a finding that he had behaved dishonestly, where the MPT had acquitted him of dishonesty;
- Even if the conduct was dishonest, the High Court was wrong to find his fitness to practice was impaired and was wrong to remit the case to the MPT.
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17 February 2016 by Guest Contributor
C-601/15 JN (in French only) offers important insights into the detention of asylum seekers. It also somewhat of a double bill, involving not one but two sets of European Human Rights.
In this post I will set out the facts, give a quick refresher of the relationship between the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (Charter). I will conclude with an overview of the decision itself.
The decision contains a number of important elements, but the one I would like to focus on is the “fit” between the ECHR and the Charter. This manifests itself on two levels. The first is the abstract relationship between the ECHR and the Charter (see Marina Wheeler’s recent post on this: A Charter too Far). This is quite straightforward (see below). The more interesting part is the relation between the different ways the ECHR and the Charter protect from unlawful detention. As shall be seen, the former lists narrow criteria for the lawfulness of detention, whereas the second effectively provides a broad protection against unlawful detention. Reconciling the two was at the heart of JN.
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26 November 2018 by Thomas Hayes
New Interpol President Kim Jong-Yang – credit The Guardian
From Strasbourg to the Strand, this week saw a plethora of judgements delivered in cases with notably interesting facts. However, arguably the most widely reported legal news concerned two stories, neither involving judgements in the UK courts. The case of six-year-old girl sexually assaulted by other pupils at a primary school made headlines after a local authority, whilst not admitting liability, settled her claim following a round table meeting in March this year. The High Court has now approved this settlement to make it binding on the parties (a necessary move when one party is a child to prevent them seeking further damages when they attain a majority) in litigation which some consider may contribute to legal precedent. More on that here. Meanwhile, the case of Matthew Hedges, a British academic jailed for life in the UAE on spying charges widely considered unfounded, appears to be resolved. Reports this morning indicate Mr Hedges has been unconditionally pardoned and is likely to be released imminently. This case raised profound questions about the rule of law and reliability of the judiciary in a Middle East country considered one of the West’s closest and most reliable partners.
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24 March 2020 by Charlotte Gilmartin
Uddin v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 338 – read judgment
On 12 March 2020 a unanimous Court of Appeal led by Sir Ernest Ryder (Senior President of the Tribunals), together with Lord Justice Bean and Lady Justice King, allowed the Appellant’s appeal against the First tier Tribunal (“FtT”) and Upper Tribunal (“UT”)’s decisions upholding the refusal of his application for leave to remain.
The case concerns the correct approach to the interpretation of Article 8 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“ECHR”) in circumstances arising out of a foster care relationship where the person who had received or continued to receive that care is now an adult.
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9 November 2011 by Rachit Buch
JGE v The English Province of Our Lady of Charity & Anor [2011] EWHC 2871 (QB) (08 November 2011) – Read judgment
Elizabeth Anne-Gumbel QC and Justin Levinson of One Crown Office Row acted for the Claimant in this case. They did not write this post.
A Roman Catholic diocese can be held liable for the negligent acts of a priest it has appointed, the High Court has ruled. The ruling is a preliminary issue in the Claimant’s proceedings against alleged sexual abuse and rape at a children’s home. The trial of these allegations are to follow.
The Claimant, a 47-year-old woman, is suing the Portsmouth Roman Catholic diocese for the injury she alleges she suffered from abuse and rape while living at a children’s home run by the diocese in the early 1970s. The priest involved, Father Baldwin, is now dead. The High Court was asked to determine, before the trial of the allegation, whether the diocese – that is, the district under supervision of the Bishop – could be held liable for Father Baldwin’s acts; whether the principle of vicarious liability applies to a diocesan bishop for the acts of a priest he has appointed.
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6 May 2012 by Sam Murrant
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your weekly bulletin of human rights news. The full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here.
In the news
This week, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office published its Report on Democracy and Human Rights and the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act was enacted. The Leveson Inquiry continues to roll on, and we have a fresh round of commentary over freedom of speech, and over the democratic legitimacy of judicial decisions on human rights.
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8 December 2013 by Sarina Kidd
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular seasonal sack-load of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found here. You can find previous roundups here. Links compiled by Adam Wagner, post by Sarina Kidd.
This week, bloggers tried to get to the bottom of the ‘forced caesarian’ case, a Supreme Court judge weighed in on the relationship between the UK and European law, and on Tuesday it’s the 65th birthday of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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7 April 2010 by Adam Wagner
Shirley Chaplin, an NHS nurse who was moved to a desk job for wearing a crucifix at work, has lost her employment discrimination claim against the NHS.
The Employment Tribunal judgment is not available at present, but The Times reports:
John Hollow, the tribunal chairman, ruled that the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital had acted reasonably in trying to reach a compromise. It had argued that the objection to the crucifix, which Mrs Chaplin, from Kenn, near Exeter, had worn for 30 years, was based on health and safety concerns about patients grabbing the necklace, not religion.
According to the Christian Legal Centre (CLC), which strongly supports Ms. Chaplin’s case, the Tribunal held that Mrs Chaplin had not been indirectly discriminated against by the application of the uniform policy because she could not prove she was part of a group affected by the policy.
The Tribunal applied the reasoning in the previous case of Nadia Eweida v British Airways [2009] EWCA Civ 1025. Ms Ewieda’s claim also involved her being banned from wearing a Christian cross at work, in that case at British Airways. The Court of Appeal made clear that in an indirect discrimination cases brought under Reg. 3(1) of the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, it was necessary to show that there had to be evidence of a “group disadvantage”, i.e. that more than one person had been affected by the policy. Ms Eweida could not establish a ‘group’ and as such her case failed.
The CLC claim that “the Tribunal has now decided that a group must be more than two people as well—leaving the law in a ludicrous level of uncertainty”. Ms Chaplin has already said she plans to appeal the decision.
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