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| HL 21 April 2005 Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, Lord Steyn, Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood |
Health Professions - Human Rights - Negligence | ||
| Parents of children had falsely and negligently been said to have been abused. The children sought damages for negligence against a doctor or social worker who has made the statement, if the suffering of psychiatric injury by the parent was a foreseeable result of making it and such injury has in fact been suffered by the parent. Held: The appeals were dismissed. The doctors had a duty to question whether abuse had occurred, and having formed a suspicion to act in accordance with the guidance. The complaint was in substance as to the length of time taken to clear the parent of the false accusation. Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead: 'For some years it has been all too evident that identifying the parameters of an expanding law of negligence is proving difficult, especially in fields involving the discharge of statutory functions by public authorities.' and 'Abandonment of the concept of a duty of care in English law, unless replaced by a control mechanism which recognises this limitation, is unlikely to clarify the law. That control mechanism has yet to be identified. And introducing this protracted period of uncertainty is unnecessary, because claims may now be brought directly against public authorities in respect of breaches of Convention rights. ' Lord Bingham of Cornhill (dissenting): It could not now be plausibly argued that a common law duty of care may not be owed by a publicly-employed healthcare professional to a child with whom the professional is dealing. In fundamental of the complaint in each case was the absolute terms of the diagnosis made and 'a negligent failure to investigate, test, explore, check and verify.' | 
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| Statute(s) referred to: European Convention on Human Rights | |||
| Judgment Links: Bailii | |||
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| CA 10 November 1947 Greene MR, Somervell LJ and Singleton J |
Administrative - Judicial Review - Licensing | ||
| The applicant challenged the conditions which had been attached to its licence to open the cinema on Sundays. It had not been allowed to admit children under 15 years of age. The statute provided no appeal procedure, and the applicant sought a declaration that the conditions were ineffective. Held: Parliament had given to the local authority a discretion as to the conditions for the licence. That discretion might be exercised in different ways according to honestly and reasonably held opinion. It was not the court's job to substitute its own opinion for that of the local authority. Greene MR: 'the discretion must be exercised reasonably. Now what does that mean? Lawyers familiar with the phraseology commonly used in relation to exercise of statutory discretions often use the word 'unreasonable' in a rather comprehensive sense. It has frequently been used and is frequently used as a general description of the things that must not be done. For instance, a person entrusted with a discretion must, so to speak, direct himself properly in law. He must call his own attention to the matters which he is bound to consider. He must exclude from his consideration matters which are irrelevant to what he has to consider. If he does not obey those rules, he may truly be said, and often is said, to be acting 'unreasonably.' Similarly, there may be something so absurd that no sensible person could ever dream that it lay within the powers of the authority.' and 'The court is entitled to investigate the action of the local authority with a view to seeing whether they have taken into account matters which they ought not to take into account, or, conversely, have refused to take into account or neglected to take into account matters which they ought to take into account. Once that question is answered in favour of the local authority, it may be still possible to say that, although the local authority have kept within the four corners of the matters which they ought to consider, they have nevertheless come to a conclusion so unreasonable that no reasonable authority could ever have come to it. In such a case, again, I think the court can interfere. The power of the court to interfere in each case is not as an appellate authority to override a decision of the local authority, but as a judicial authority which is concerned, and concerned only, to see whether the local authority have contravened the law by acting in excess of the powers which Parliament has confided in them.' |
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| Statute(s) referred to: Cinematograph Act 1909 - Sunday Entertainments Act 1932 | |||
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