We use cookies to enhance your browsing experience. If you continue to use our website we will take this to mean that you agree to our use of cookies. If you want to find out more, please view our cookie policy. Accept and Hide [x]
The decision of the Court of Protection in Rotherham and Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust and NR [2024] EWCOP 17 is the latest in a line of cases where the Court has been asked to determine whether a termination of pregnancy is in a woman’s best interests. Any case about a termination engages the pregnant woman’s Article 8 rights. But where the woman also lacks capacity to decide for herself whether to have a termination, there must be a particularly careful analysis to ensure that her rights are respected. While previous decisions have frequently accorded weight to the wishes and feelings of the pregnant woman at the heart of the case, Mr Justice Hayden’s decision goes further in handing the decision over to the pregnant woman herself.
This was one of those deeply troubling cases where there was disagreement amongst the family members over whether their incapacitated brother/father should continue with clinically assisted nutrition and hydration. One brother had applied for ANH to be discontinued, but because of the objections of the patient’s son, it was said that he would “continue to be cared for by nursing staff”.
As Hayden J observed, this was a “troubling non sequitur”:
Family dissent to a medical consensus should never stand in the way of an incapacitated patient’s best interests being properly identified. A difference of view between the doctors and a family member should not be permitted to subjugate this best interest investigation.
This particular hearing was ex post facto: in 11th June 2021, Hayden J delivered an extempore judgment in which he indicated why the continued provision of nutrition and hydration to GU, in the manner outlined above, was contrary to GU’s interests. However, having concluded that it was not in GU’s best interests to continue to receive CANH at the hearing on 11th June 2021, he considered it was necessary to afford RHND the opportunity of explaining what had happened. Amelia Walker of 1 Crown Office Row represented the hospital in these proceedings.
The appeal was allowed on the basis that care workers making arrangements to secure the services of a sex worker for C would place the care workers in peril of committing an offence contrary to section 39 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (“SOA”).
Background
The issue was whether care workers would commit a criminal offence under section 39 of the SOA if they made practical arrangements for C to visit a sex worker. C had the capacity to consent to sexual relations but not to make the arrangements.
Section 39(1) SOA states that:
A person (A) commits an offence if—
(a) he intentionally causes or incites another person (B) to engage in an activity,
(b) the activity is sexual,
(c) B has a mental disorder,
(d) A knows or could reasonably be expected to know that B has a mental disorder, and
(e) A is involved in B’s care in a way that falls within section 42.
[Emphasis Added]
The central question was whether the care workers would “cause” C to engage in sexual activity by making the arrangements. Hayden J concluded that they would not cause C to engage in sexual activity.
The Secretary of State for Justice appealed on three grounds:
The Judge misinterpreted section 39 SOA;
To sanction the use of sex is contrary to public policy (this ground of appeal was raised by way of an opposed amendment);
The Judge erred in concluding that Articles 8 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”) required his favoured interpretation.
In a recent report entitled “It Still Happens Here”, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) and the anti-slavery charity Justice and Care have found a rise in incidents of domestic slavery, and warned that the problem is likely to intensify in the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis.
How to determine “best interests” in the case of an adult lacking capacity, where a proposed medical donation for the benefit of a close relative may cause lasting harm to the donor?
COVID-19 has changed many things about society, and one of the most significant is the erosion of the taboo surrounding death. After all, we have daily bulletins on death figures. As Dignity in Dying Sarah Wootton says, in her forthcoming book “Last Rights”,
The coronavirus pandemic has thrust death and dying into the mainstream.
This sensitive and compassionate judgment by Hayden J following a remote hearing of the Court of Protection is therefore worth our attention, as we all become more aware of how acutely things slip out of our control, not least of all our health.
The application from the Trust concerned a 34-year-old man (MSP) who has had significant gastrointestinal problems for approximately 10 years, requiring repeated invasive surgery. At the time of the hearing he was unconscious and on life support in ICU. The issue framed in the application was whether the Trust should continue to provide ITU support or withdraw treatment other than palliative care.
Between 2013 and 2020 MST underwent significant abdominal surgery and had a stoma inserted in 2018. The court noted that he “utterly loathed” life with a stoma. He did express his consent to the stoma being inserted at the time, but this consent seemed entirely contrary to his unambiguous rejection of this procedure, expressed bluntly to three consultants with whom he had discussed it. It also appeared entirely inconsistent with everything he had said to his mother, father and step-sister on the point.
Significantly, on 4th February 2020 MSP had written a carefully crafted Advance Directive which he had copied to his parents and to his step-sister. Outside the hospital setting these were the only three people who knew MSP had a stoma. He did not even wish his grandmother to be told. In this Advance Directive he stipulated, among other things, that he would refuse the “formation of a stoma, through an ileostomy, colostomy, urostomy or similar, that is expected to be permanent or with likelihood of reversal of 50% or under”.
In the matter of proceedings brought by Kings College NHS Foundation Trust concerning C (who died on 28 November 2015) v The Applicant and Associated Newspapers Ltd and others [2016] EWCOP21 – read judgment
The Court of Protection has just ruled that where a court has restricted the publication of information during proceedings that were in existence during a person’s lifetime, it has not only the right but the duty to consider, when requested to do so, whether that information should continue to be protected following the person’s death.
I posted last year on the case of a woman who had suffered kidney failure as a result of a suicide attempt has been allowed to refuse continuing dialysis. The Court of Protection rejected the hospital’s argument that such refusal disclosed a state of mind that rendered her incapable under the Mental Capacity Act. An adult patient who suffers from no mental incapacity has an absolute right to choose whether to consent to medical treatment (King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust v C and another [2015] EWCOP 80). Continue reading →
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust v C and another [2015] EWCOP 80 read judgment
A woman who suffered kidney failure as a result of a suicide attempt has been allowed to refuse continuing dialysis. The Court of Protection rejected the hospital’s argument that such refusal disclosed a state of mind that rendered her incapable under the Mental Capacity Act. An adult patient who suffers from no mental incapacity has an absolute right to choose whether to consent to medical treatment. Continuation of such treatment is unlawful, even if the refusal seems irrational to others. As the judge said, this rule
reflects the value that society places on personal autonomy in matters of medical treatment and the very long established right of the patient to choose to accept or refuse medical treatment from his or her doctor (voluntas aegroti suprema lex). Over his or her own body and mind, the individual is sovereign (John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859).
The Trust’s further application to be allowed to restrain C “physically or chemically” from leaving the hospital where she was receiving the dialysis was therefore rejected.
Background facts
The coverage of this case reflects a certain level of social disapproval. “Right to die for socialite scared of growing old” – “Socialite allowed to die was terrified of being poor” run the headlines. Behind them lurks an essentially religious consensus that people should not be allowed to opt out of senescence and its associated poverty and suffering, such matters being for God alone. There is also a measure of censoriousness behind the details brought to court regarding C’s attitude to motherhood and men, the news that she had breast cancer, her love of “living the high life” and her dread of growing old “in a council house”. Continue reading →
Judgments in best interests cases involving children often make for heart-wrenching reading. And so it was in Bolton NHS Foundation Trust v C (by her Children’s Guardian)[2015] EWHC 2920 (Fam), a case which considered Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health guidance, affirming its approach was in conformity with Article 2 and Article 3 ECHR. It also described, in the clearest terms, the terrible challenges facing C’s treating clinicians and her parents. Continue reading →
SF, Re [2015] EWCOP 68 (26 October 2015) – read judgment
This Court of Protection case has, unusually, made the papers, and when you read the details you won’t be surprised. What the judge described as a “callous and calculating” son charged his widowed mother, who suffered from dementia, more than £117 000 for “out of pocket expenses” visiting her in her nursing home. He had been in charge of her expenses since 2004 when Sheila (the mother) had been admitted to hospital under the Mental Health Act 1983. But alarm bells only went off after her unpaid nursing bills reached nearly £30 000. The Public Guardian launched an enquiry that led to this hearing of an application for the court to revoke the son’s (Martin’s) Enduring Power of Attorney (‘EPA’) and to direct him to cancel its registration. The Public Guardian also applied to freeze Sheila’s bank account. Continue reading →
Wye Valley NHS Trust v B (Rev 1) [2015] EWCOP 60 (28 September 2015) – read judgment
The Court of Protection has recently ruled that a mentally incapacitated adult could refuse a life saving amputation. This is an important judgement that respects an individual’s right to autonomy despite overwhelming medical evidence that it might be in his best interests to override his wishes. The judge declined to define the 73 year old man at the centre of this case by reference to his mental illness, but rather recognised his core quality is his “fierce independence” which, he accepted, was what Mr B saw as under attack. Continue reading →
A healthcare NHS Trust v P & Q [2015] EWCOP (13 March 2015) – read judgment
The Court of Protection has clarified the position on revealing the identity of an incapacitated adult where reporting restrictions apply.
This case concerned a man, P, who as a result of a major cardiac arrest in 2014, has been on life support for the past four months. Medical opinion suggests that he is unlikely ever to recover any level of consciousness, but his family disagrees strongly with this position. The Trust therefore applied to the Court for a declaration in P’s best interests firstly, not to escalate his care and secondly to discontinue some care, inevitably leading to his demise. The trust also applied for a reporting restrictions order. When it sought to serve that application on the Press Association through the Injunctions Alert Service, the family (represented by the second Continue reading →
A Local Authority and M (By his litigation friend via the Official Solicitor) v E and A (Respondents) [2014] EWCOP 33 (11 August 2014) – read judgment
It’s been an interesting week for the extreme fringes of maternal care. The papers report a trial where a mother is being prosecuted for administering toxic levels of medication to her daughter for “conditions that never existed” (as the court heard). Let’s see how that pans out.
And now the Court of Protection has published a ruling by Baker J that a a supporter of the discredited doctor Andrew Wakefield embarked on an odyssey of intrusive remedies and responses to her son’s disorder, fabricating claims of damage from immunisation, earning her membership of what science journalist Brian Deer calls the class of “Wakefield mothers.”
On the face of it, the detailed and lengthy judgment concerns the applicant son’s reaction to the MMR vaccination when it was administered in infancy, and whether it was the cause of his autism and a novel bowel disease, the latter being Wakefield’s brainchild. But at the heart of the case lies the phenomenon that we all used to know as Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy.
G (Adult), Re [2014] (Associated Newspapers Limited intervening) EWCOP 1361 (1 May 2014) – read judgment
Sir James Munby, President of the Court of Protection has ruled that the Daily Mail has no standing to be joined as a party in welfare proceedings in relation to a vulnerable adult who has been declared by the courts as lacking capacity under the Mental Capacity Act.
Background to the application
The court was concerned with a 94 year old woman, a British African Caribbean who lives in her own home in London. G is 94 years old. G has never married and has no children. She has no family living in the UK. She suffers from conditions that have limited her mobility; arthritis, rheumatism, a dislocation of her left knee and carpal tunnel syndrome. She also has high blood pressure and double incontinence. G rarely leaves home now, except for hospital appointments. Continue reading →
Wandsworth Clinical Commissioning Group v IA (By the Official Solicitor as his Litigation Friend) [2014] EWHC 990 (COP) 3 April 2014 – read judgment
This was a case about determination of mental capacity, which both judge and counsel described as “particularly difficult and finely balanced”. The judge was confronted with a great deal of conflicting evidence about the capabilities of the individual in question, but concluded in the end that
His capacity may be seen to have fluctuated in the past; this is in my judgment more likely to be attributable to transient cognitive dysfunction due to metabolic reasons as a result of his physical illness … than the progression of symptoms of his acute brain injury.
Background
IA is a 60 year old man from a professional family and himself a physics graduate who once ran his own business. But his life has been eroded by extremely poor health, Type II Diabetes and related disabilities such as anaemia and partial blindness. Then in 2007 he was the subject of a violent criminal assault, being repeatedly kicked in the head, leaving him with a serious head injury, involving skull fractures, brain haemorrhage and contusions to the right frontal area of the brain. Continue reading →
This blog is maintained for information purposes only. It is not intended to be a source of legal advice and must not be relied upon as such. Blog posts reflect the views and opinions of their individual authors, not of chambers as a whole.
Our privacy policy can be found on our ‘subscribe’ page or by clicking here.
Judgments in best interests cases involving children often make for heart-wrenching reading. And so it was in 
This blog is run by
Recent comments