His Honour Peter Rook QC has decided to hear the forthcoming inquest into the death of Sean Benton without a jury. Private Benton died from gunshot wounds at Deepcut Barracks in 1995, the first of four deaths at the barracks that have caused enduring public interest and led to numerous investigations. The original inquest, which […]
Read More… from Deepcut Coroner decides to hear inquest without jury
R (Scarfe & Ors) v Governor HMP Woodhill & SoS Justice [2017] EWHC 1194 (Admin) HMP Woodhill has achieved the unenviable status of having the highest rate and the highest number of self-inflicted deaths of any prison in the entire prison estate. Thirteen men have died there since 2013 at their own hand, seven of […]
Read More… from Self inflicted deaths in prison: “Something must be done” – but what?
R (Gudanaviciene) v Immigration and Asylum First Tier Tribunal [2017] EWCA Civ 352 All humans make mistakes, Coroners included. Fortunately for any Coroner reading this, so long as you are merely human (and not flagrantly improper) and you don’t seek to defend your errors, then you should not be ordered to pay the successful applicant’s […]
R (T) v HM Senior Coroner for the County of West Yorkshire [2017] EWCA Civ 318 A young woman arrived at A&E with her mother. They were carrying a shoebox. Inside the shoebox was the body of a baby girl. The baby’s mother, aged 19, had kept her pregnancy a secret and delivered the child […]
Read More… from A death behind closed doors, but an Inquest in public
Shaw v Leigh Day (A firm) [2017] EWHC 825 QB Attention family representatives! Absolutely nooo pressure at all, it’s just that if you don’t get your client the closure they want out of an inquest, now you can be sued for damages for causing them distress. That is the effect of this recent High Court […]
Read More… from Inquest representation: Is there a contractual right to “closure”?