Hospital Orders: Detention in a Place of Safety Pending Transfer

R (DB) v Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust[2008] EWCA Civ 1354Laws, Longmore and Stanley Burnton LJ

“She took no reasoning”: Enticing Someone into a Public Place

McMillan v Crown Prosecution Service[2008] EWHC 1457 (Admin

A Private Function

R (Mersey Care NHS Trust) v Mental Health Review Tribunal; Ian Stuart Brady (First Interested Party) and Secretary of State for the Home Department (Second Interested Party)Queen’s Bench Division (Administrative Court), Beatson J, 22 July 2004 EWHC (Admin) 1749A MHRT may sit in private even though a patient requests a public hearing and the ECHR presumes in favour of such a cours

The Legal Implications of the Administration of Placebo to Psychiatric Patients

This paper concerns a practice that is sometimes encountered in the treatment of patients with mental illness: the use of placebo for purportedly therapeutic purposes. It will consider the lawfulness of that practice under domestic law, and suggest that previous attempts to perform such an analysis may be flawed. It will argue that existing statutory restrictions may apply to – and prohibit – therapeutic placebo administration, and will conclude with a brief analysis of the possible impact upon such administration of the Human Rights Act 1998

There is no magic in a bed – The renewal of detention during a period of leave

R (on the application of DR) v Mersey Care NHS TrustCO/1232/2002Administrative Court (7 August 2002) Mr. Justice Wilson

Detention of a recently-discharged psychiatric patient

R v East London & the City Mental Health NHS Trust and David Stuart Snazell, Approved Social Worker, ex parte Count Franz Von BrandenburgCourt of Appeal, 21 February 2001, The Master of the Rolls, Buxton LJ and Sedley LJ[2001] 3 WLR 588Although it was unnecessary to show a change in circumstances following discharge by a MHRT, it would be difficult for an ASW to be satisfied that a fresh application for detention, made within days of detention, ought to be mad

What is a hospital?

A number of possible answers have been proposed. Though most are perfectly sensible and, to varying degrees, helpful, none resolves the question entirely. The purpose of this paper is to consider those answers and to identify the merits and demerits of each

Something less than ready access to the courts: Section 139 & Local Authorities

Psychiatric patients who wish to bring legal proceedings against those responsible for their detention or treatment can face an obstacle of which better-favoured litigants are free: because of a provision contained in section 139 of the Mental Health Act 1983 they will often have to obtain the prior leave of the High Court.This paper will consider the origins of that provision. It will then focus on two of its key elements - the requirement for leave itself and the exceptions to it - and will analyse their impact upon subsequent caselaw and upon current legal practice.In so doing, this paper will describe an anomaly which continues to bedevil intending claimants, and will assess the extent to which it is attributable to the legal and political events of a generation ago, and to a legislative impulse which is even more keenly felt today