Hold his hand.

Discussion in 'Bulletin Board' started by thetykester, Aug 2, 2022.

  1. Tek

    Tekkytyke Well-Known Member

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    Firstly , I understand you fighting your corner as a legal practitioner, something of which I was unaware. I therefore fully accept that I am in the wrong for targeting individual lawyers for this current situation rather than a system that places constraints on them and places them in difficult, almost impossible situations, so for that I apologise.
    Furthermore, I also fully agree with, and respect the stance and position you would adopt if you were representing them. 'You can lead a horse to water...' as the saying goes.

    I understand why the rule exists as you say to prevent defence lawyers dropping out of cases that are heading for failure, although that would IMO seem more relevant to criminal law rather than civil actions where some wealthy individual or large organisation could initiate and pursue a case even though they know they will certainly lose, simply in order to cause the maximum loss to an individual or a small business who cannot afford the interim damage to their reputation even if they win and are afforded costs. The legal team are then be trapped into promoting an 'unjust cause'. History is littered with cases where businesses have been ruined by spurious legal actions.

    I believe in this instance, whilst the courts have their say, an independent arbitrator intermediary would have possibly been a solution. The family believe that the medical evidence is coming from a source with a vested interest in turning off the life support which is true even even though in reality the hospital is 99%-100% certain to be doing so in the patients best interests.

    At no time have the lawyers representing the parents been able to present a medical expert who counters the evidence provided by the doctors caring for the patient. On that basis, for the case to have been dragged through the courts for system, appeal after appeal , under the current due process is plain wrong. It seems that there is no requirement to produce new evidence to enable an appeal (what is in effect a review of evidence retrial ) Obviously there needs to be an appeal system to reduce the chances of a miscarriage of justice but to go through so many levels without the material evidence changing seems illogical, Again, you probably have a good reason for why that is allowed to happen.

    Social services via the courts can, in extreme cases, remove a child deemed to be at threat from parent or where it is deemed the parent cannot provide for a child. That means the rights of the parents, based on evidence are removed and the child taken into care temporarily or long term adopted. These are low profile and do not therefore make the headlines. Whilst ending the life of a child is far more serious, the experts Doctors here have far clearer evidence, unlike their parallel experts i.e. Social Services, who often operate in a grey area and as a result have occasionally made errors. Again the courts are totally reliant on the evidence presented.
    So, ultimately, my argument has been all along, at what point should parental responsibility be overridden to protect a child from further harm?
     
  2. Tek

    Tekkytyke Well-Known Member

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    Acknowledged... see my post 21# to Mansfield_red
     
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  3. man

    mansfield_red Well-Known Member

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    Access to justice is relevant in civil matters. You can't leave it open to lawyers to choose not to represent someone, as cases which seem bound to lose do sometimes win, and if you did that then it would disproportionately affect the poorer as the rich could just offer the lawyer an increased sum to take a losing case if they were otherwise disinclined to take it.

    As for dragging it out through appeals, it isn't as big an issue as you think. We have a system where the first step is obtaining permission to appeal. If the higher court don't think there is a triable issue then permission will be refused. This is what happened in this case with the Supreme Court. They didn't have an appeal heard at the SC, as I understand it they applied for permission and were refused. So there is already a mechanism for identifying and disposing of meritless appeals quickly and efficiently.
     

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