Cases

SummaryThis is both an interesting and an important decision.It is interesting because it is the first reported English[1] case considering Dissociative Identity Disorder and capacity (although, in fact, it appears that the appropriate diagnosis was ... Read more  

SummaryWhorlton Hall hospital housed patients with longstanding learning disabilities and significant additional psychological and behavioural needs, who required specialist care. Some were detained under s.3 Mental Health Act 1983. Over 38 days... Read more  

SummaryThis judgment considered an application by SBB’s professional deputy (Daniel Lumb) to be discharged from his role.  The central issue was what involvement a property and affairs deputy can/should have in the management of a Personal Healt... Read more  

SummaryThis case concerns the challenge of delayed discharge from hospital and, specifically, when the delay to discharge comes from the fact that the patient considers that they cannot leave. The judgment, reflecting (no doubt) the frustration of th... Read more  

Re CD (Treatment: Haemodialysis) [2024] EWCOP 55 T3 concerned a 66 year old man with end stage renal disease and dementia.  He had been receiving haemodialysis since 2022, but following a third stroke in the summer of 2024, he had repeatedly pul... Read more  

Summary In this case, Poole J dealt with a quite extraordinary set of facts: an order authorising the withdrawal of life-sustaining ventilation which culminated, via circuitous routes and serendipity, to a child, previously confined to a critica... Read more  

Summary The decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Pindo Mulla v Spain [2024] ECHR 753 is a very significant case about the interplay between Articles 2 and 8 ECHR in the context of the refusal of medical treatment.Ms Pindo was a Jeho... Read more  

Summary HX was in her late 40s and suffered a cardiac arrest resulting in severe and irreversible brain injury with no prospect of recovery. She had been living with her son who opposed the withdrawal of treatment. Although they had not previous... Read more  

SummaryNN was a 32-year-old woman with a history of substance abuse and schizophrenia, repeatedly detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 from the age of 17 and homeless since 2023. She experienced a coercive, abusive relationship leading to a rela... Read more  

SummaryThis is a decision which is very helpfully summarised in the case title. In summary terms, it involved the court having to decide what to do, and how to do it, to secure the interests of CA, a 79 year old woman with dementia. Her daughter, DA,... Read more  

Summary Without straying into politics, this is a case which demonstrates the consequences of the fact that much state-funded care – including coercive mental health care – is now delivered privately.  It concerns a man, Paul Sammut, w... Read more  

Summary In this case, Cobb J was asked to determine the capacity and best interests of a woman as regards investigation and treatment of potentially serious conditions including different forms of cancer.  The woman had a long-standing ment... Read more