Author: Bridget Dolan QC

Sammut and ors v Next Steps Mental Health Care & Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust [2024] EWHC 2265 (KB), 2 September 2024. Judgment here Anyone who thought the issue of the engagement of Article 2 and health care might now be settled after Maguire[1] was being over-optimistic.  There seem to remain a myriad […]

Read More… from Article 2 obligations do not apply to clinical negligence by a private nursing home

Morris v Morris, Shmuel and White [2024] EWHC 2554 (Ch),  9 October 2024, Judgment here. On occasions a coroner may be faced with a case where the issue of another person aiding the deceased to take their own life arises.  Whilst suicide has long been decriminalised, assisting someone to end their life remains a criminal […]

Read More… from A compassionate approach to assisted dying

HM Senior Coroner for Cornwall And the Scilly Isles [2024] EWHC 2673 (Admin). 22 October 2024.  Judgment here Where a Coroner has conducted an inquest and, through no fault of their own, done so on the basis of an incomplete picture of the circumstances surrounding the death,  both the interests of the bereaved and the […]

Read More… from Inquests quashed in the interests of justice after fresh evidence reveals sub-standard treatment

HM Senior Coroner Sarah Ormond-Walshe v Sherren [2024] EWHC 2332. Judgment (here) 30 July 2024 Language matters, particularly in public life.  It is now well accepted that no coroner or inquest lawyer should ever say (or invite a jury to find) that someone has ‘committed suicide’.   That archaic term connoting criminal conduct not only carries […]

Read More… from Language matters: Making reference to a “suicide note” is not appropriate