Mental Capacity Act
15 October 2014 by Rosalind English
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.
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2 June 2014 by Rosalind English
UPDATE | The 1COR event which this post previously referred to is now full, so please do not turn up unless you have registered.
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust v TH and Anor [2014] EWCOP (22 May 2014) – read judgment
In a careful and humane judgment, the Court of Protection has demonstrated that the law is capable of overlooking the stringent requirements of the conditions governing advance directives, and stressed that a “holistic” view of the patients’ wishes and feelings must be adopted, if those point to the withdrawal of life saving treatment.
Background
TH was admitted to the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield earlier this year. His general health revealed a background of known alcohol excess, and he had suffered neurological damage involving seizures and severe depression of consciousness.
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3 November 2013 by Kate Beattie
Aintree University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (Respondent) v James (Appellant) [2013] UKSC 67 – Read judgment / press summary
The Supreme Court has given judgment in the first case to come before it under the Mental Capacity Act 2005. The sole judgment was given by Lady Hale (Deputy President of the Court), with whom Lord Neuberger, Lord Clarke, Lord Carnwath and Lord Hughes.
The case concerned best interests decisions in the case of a patient lacking capacity. The patient, David James, had been admitted to hospital in May 2012 aged around 68 because of a problem with a stoma he had had fitted in 2001 during successful treatment for cancer of the colon. The problem was soon solved but he acquired an infection which was complicated by the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, an acute kidney injury and persistent low blood pressure. He was admitted to the critical care unit and placed on a ventilator.
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6 April 2012 by Richard Mumford
DL v A Local Authority & Others [2012] EWCA Civ 253 – Read judgment
Where adults have capacity under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA 2005), does the “great safety net” of the High Court’s inherent jurisdiction still exist to guard them from the effect on their decision making of undue influence, coercion, duress etc? In its judgment handed down on 28 March 2012, the Court of Appeal confirmed that it does.
DL proceeded in the High Court and the Court of Appeal on assumed (as opposed to agreed) facts, many if not all of which were contested by the appellant. For the court’s purposes however, it was assumed that DL, a man in his 50s who lived with his mother and father (90 and 85 respectively), had behaved aggressively towards his parents, physically and verbally, controlling access to visitors and seeking to coerce his father into transferring ownership of the house into DL’s name, whilst pressuring his mother into moving into a care home against her wishes. The Court of Appeal’s judgment uses the term “elder abuse” for such a situation.
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25 August 2010 by Caroline Cross
A Local Authority v Mrs A, by her Litigation Friend, the Official Solicitor, and Mr A [2010] EWHC 1549 (Fam) – Read judgment
In the first case of its kind, the court was asked to consider whether a young married woman lacks capacity to decide whether to use contraception, and whether it would be in her interests to be required to receive it.
Mrs A was a 29-year-old woman who suffered from serious learning difficulties, which put her intellectual functioning at approximately 0.1% of adults her age. In 2004 she gave birth to a daughter, and in 2005 she had a son. Both children were removed from her at birth because she did not have the capacity to take care of them.
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28 April 2010 by Elspeth Wrigley
A (BY HIS LITIGATION FRIEND THE OFFICIAL SOLICITOR) v INDEPENDENT NEWS & MEDIA LTD & ORS [2010] EWCA Civ 343 – Read judgment
This appeal was bought on behalf of a severely disabled adult (known as “A”), against the order of Hedley J of 19 November 2009 that the media should be granted access to a hearing in the Court of Protection. The Lord Chief Justice has refused the appeal.
The case was unconventional, largely because of A’s own situation. A had been totally blind from birth and suffered from acute learning difficulties associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder, which meant that he was not able to lead an independent life and was dependent on others for his care. Despite this, however, A had taught himself the piano and had gone on to become an extraordinary gifted musician, and was described by the judge as ‘a man of remarkable accomplishment’.
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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
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