By Jenny Kitzinger, 22nd December 2021 The hearing I attended on 21st December 2021 before Ms Justice Russell was yet another case which underlines the dangers of not planning ahead for possible future loss of capacity. This is what can happen to any of us, at any time, if we are suddenly brain injured, whether fromContinue reading “Family dispute about life-sustaining treatment: A directions hearing”
Tag Archives: Mental Capacity
Covid vaccination and a Christmas visit
Her mother very badly wants PH to come home for Christmas. She described how she and her daughter “love each other dearly” and “have joy and pleasure in the time we spend together”. Her daughter she said, “loves Christmas decorations and a tree” – and visible on screen, in her home behind her, was a decorated tree with multi-coloured lights.
“At loggerheads”: Habitual residence, best interests and life-sustaining treatment
loggerheads”, but also that the family was effectively “on a different page” about how serious treatment decisions are made in a patient’s best interests, and how the Court of Protection works to ensure that.
Family witnesses in court: Four reflections on Re AH (A Rehearing)
Suggesting that the family is lacking in objectivity because they are in some way psychologically compromised serves the purpose of undermining and discrediting their evidence. This was not necessary to powerfully argue the Trust’s case that ongoing life-sustaining treatment is not in AH’s best interests. The medical evidence stood alone.
Elective caesarean in her best interests
Despite guidance concerning applications for court-sanctioned interventions in childbirth, it’s common for cases to come before the court (as here) where women are within 4 weeks of their expected delivery, and judges regularly express concern that they are having to make decisions about childbirth for women close to (or even after) their due dates.
Health and Welfare Attorney applies for urgent hearing on life-sustaining treatment
The patient’s son and daughter had been asked to agree to the insertion of the naso-gastric tube (on about 23rd October 2021) but had not been consulted about its removal. They say they’d not been told about the removal of the tube in advance, or asked what their mother would want.
Approving a conveyancing plan to move P to residential care
The need for an urgent hearing was because the house that P had been living in had been sold at auction and completion of the sale was due the following week (on 18th November). The house needed to be cleared of furniture and effects before then. Additionally, P needed to vacate the property and live elsewhere.
How long can you keep trying to rebut the presumption of capacity?
By Celia Kitzinger, 3rd December 2021 It’s a fundamental principle of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 that “A person must be assumed to have capacity unless it is established that he lacks capacity” (1(2)) Likewise, “A person is not to be treated as unable to make a decision merely because he makes an unwise decision” (1(4)). TheContinue reading “How long can you keep trying to rebut the presumption of capacity?”
The most complex Covid patient in the world: Planning for a re-hearing after a successful appeal
All this detailed planning – what needs to be provided by what deadline and by whom – is part of preparing for a full hearing, especially where (as here) matters are contested. Hearings like these feel relatively pedestrian: they lack the intrinsic interest we all feel about the ethically weighty decisions made in final hearings. But they are the essential scaffolding upon which those final hearings depend.
Capacity to engage in sex: Nine responses to the Supreme Court Judgment in Re. JB
The Supreme Court considered the issue of whether to have capacity to decide to have sexual relations with another person, a person needs to understand that the other person must have the capacity to consent to the sexual activity, and must in fact consent before and throughout the sexual activity.
Promoting Open Justice in the Court of Protection 