The European Court of Human Rights continues to make clear that a failure by member states to protect women from domestic violence will amount to a breach of article 3. The latest decision in Affaire Buturuga v Romania (App No. 56867/15), available only in French, found a breach of Articles 3 and 8 in respect of a failure to investigate adequately and/or take action on complaints of domestic violence and awarded €10,000 general damages.
Not an English case – but those concerned at the time taken for police cases to be resolved may raise an eyebrow at the case of Kupo v Independent State of Papua New Guinea [2020] PGNC 3. A Papua New Guniea Commissioner of Police was appointed on 1 November 2001, removed from post on 12 September 2002 and then removed from the payroll on 12 December 2002. He was still litigating for damages in 2019. Aside from the case failing for being two years out-of-time, the court held that where the decision to redeploy the Commissioner, having the effect of removing him, was the result of a policy or administrative instruction, this gave rise to no legally enforceable rights or obligations.
Two recent cases have required the High Court and Court of Appeal to consider in detail the use by local authorities of different powers contained in the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 (“ASBCPA”) to limit or prevent protests that have contained a strong religious or moral element. To what extent are the courts prepared to sanction the use of these powers in relation to types of activities that perhaps would not immediately spring to mind when the words ‘anti-social behaviour’ are heard? The answer, in two words, is ‘very prepared’, judging by the decisions in the cases of Dulgerhiu v London Borough of Ealing [2019] EWCA Civ 1490 and Birmingham City Council v Asfar [2019] EWHC 3217 (QB).
The first case concerned a challenge to the imposition by the London Borough of Ealing of a Public Spaces Protection Order. In the second the High Court granted a final anti-social behaviour injunction, sought by Birmingham City Council under section 1 of the 2014 Act. While the cases raise real issues as to the balancing of the Human Rights Act 1998 articles 9, 10 and 11 rights of the ‘protestor’ against those affected by the protests, as will be seen the Courts have had little hesitation in approving or taking action where there was evidence of real harm being caused.
In R (AB) v Chief Constable of Hampshire Constabulary [2019] EWHC 3461 (Admin), the Divisional Court considered a claim on behalf of a boy with severe learning and communication disabilities, that police had failed properly to investigate what appeared to be a disclosure by him of a sexual assault during a stay at in respite care. He argued that they had wrongly proceeded to interview him despite no witness intermediary being available and had subsequently failed to re-interview him with an intermediary. He argued that this was a breach of Article 3, and unlawful disability discrimination. The Court dismissed the claim, also giving important procedural guidance.
Last year, I wrote a post on this blog discussing a High Court judgment which held that qualified one-way costs shifting (‘QOCS’) protection does not apply automatically in proceedings where a claimant is advancing both a claim for damages for personal injury and a claim other than a claim for damages for personal injury (a ‘mixed claim’). The claimant’s appeal in in Brown v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [2019] EWCA Civ 1724 has now been unanimously dismissed by the Court of Appeal.