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These cases are from the lawindexpro database. They are now being transferred to the swarb.co.uk website in a better form. As a case is published there, an entry here will link to it. The swarb.co.uk site includes many later cases.  














Children - From: 1980 To: 1984

This page lists 19 cases, and was prepared on 20 May 2019.

 
Puttick v Attorney General etc [1980] Fam 1; [1981] QB 767
1980
FD
Sir George Baker P
Children, Immigration
Astrid Proll, a former member of the Baader-Meinhof gang absconded while awaiting trial in Germany. She entered the UK using a passport which she had bought in the name of Senta Sauerbier, and married Robin Puttick under that name. The German authorities discovered her true identity and location, and applied to extradite her. She applied under section 6 of the 1948 Act. Section 6 gave an apparently unqualified right to any woman married to a United Kingdom citizen to be registered as a citizen of the United Kingdom. She sought a declaration that the marriage was a valid and subsisting marriage, as she had acquired a domicile of choice in England. Held: Her leave to enter had been obtained by the fraudulent production of an invalid passport, and she was barred from acquiring a domicile of choice here. A fugitive from foreign justice will not acquire habitual residence in this jurisdiction simply by reliance on a temporal period during which the claimant has outwitted authority. Sir George Baker P cited Dicey & Morrs: "It has been held that a domicile of choice cannot be acquired by illegal residence. The reason for this rule is that a court cannot allow a person to acquire a domicile in defiance of the law which that court itself administers."
British Nationality Act 1948 6
1 Citers



 
 Re R (Minors)(Wardship: Jurisdiction); CA 1981 - (1981) 2 FLR 416
 
Regina v Sheppard [1981] AC 394
1981
HL
Lord Diplock
Crime, Children
The section made it an offence for anyone having care of a child to wilfully neglect the child "in a manner likely to cause him unnecessary suffering or injury to health". Held: The section speaks of an act or omission that is ‘likely’ to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to health. This word is imprecise. It is capable of covering a whole range of possibilities from ‘it’s on the cards’ to ‘it’s more probable than not’, but having regard to the ordinary parent’s lack of skill in diagnosis and to the very serious consequences which may result from failure to provide a child with timely medical attention, it should be understood as excluding only what would fairly be described as highly unlikely.
Lord Diplock: "To "neglect" a child is to omit to act, to fail to provide adequately for its needs; and, in the context of section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, its physical needs rather than its spiritual, educational, moral or emotional needs. These are dealt with by other legislation."
Children and Young Persons Act 1933 1
1 Cites

1 Citers



 
 In re P (A Minor); 1981 - [1981] 80 LGR 301

 
 Attorney General ex rel Tilley v Wandsworth London Borough Council; 1981 - [1981] 1 WLR 854

 
 W v A (Minor: Surname); CA 1981 - [1981] Fam 14

 
 JBH and JH (minors) v O'Connell; QBD 1981 - [1981] Crim LR 632

 
 In Re B (A Minor) (Wardship: Medical Treatment); CA 1981 - [1990] 3 All ER 927; [1981] 1 WLR 1424

 
 A v Liverpool City Council; HL 1981 - [1982] AC 363; Times, 21 May 1981; (1981) 2 FLR 222
 
Moodey v Field Unreported, 13 February 1981
13 Feb 1981
CA
Ormrod LJ
Children
The mother appealed against refusal of permission to remove the child from the jurisdiction. Held. Ormrod LJ summarised the situation: "the question therefore in each case is, is the proposed move a reasonable one from the point of view of the adults involved? If the answer is yes, then leave should only be refused if it is clearly shown beyond any doubt that the interests of the children and the interests of the custodial parent are incompatible. One might postulate a situation where a boy or girl is well settled in a boarding school, or something of that kind, and it could be said to be very disadvantageous to upset the situation and move the child into a very different educational system. I merely take that as an example. Short of something like that, the court in principle should not interfere with the reasonable decision of the custodial parent."
1 Citers


 
Clarke-Hunt v Newcombe [1982] 4 FLR 482
1982
CA
Cumming-Bruce LJ
Children
Cumming-Bruce LJ discussed the difficulty faced by an appeal court: "There was not really a right solution: there were two alternative wrong solutions. The problem for the judge was to appreciate the factors pointing in each direction and to decide which of the two was the least dangerous havng regard to the long term interests of the children, and so he decided the matter.
Whether I would have decided it in the same way if I had been in the position of the trial judge I do not know. I might have taken the same course as the judge and I might not, but I was never in that situation. I am sitting in the Court of Appeal deciding a quite different question: has it been shown that the judge to whom Parliament has confided the exercise of dicretion, plainly got the wrong answer? I emphasise the word 'plainly'. In spite of the efforts of [counsel] the answer to that question clearly must be that the judge has not been shown plainly to have got it wrong."
1 Cites

1 Citers


 
Hendricks v Netherlands (1983) 5 EHRR 223
1983
ECHR

Human Rights, Children
(Commission) In the context of article 8 the rights and freedoms of the child include his interests. "The Commission has consistently held that, in assessing the question of whether or not the refusal of the right of access to the non-custodial parent was in confidentially with article 8 of the Convention the interests of the child predominate."
European Convention on Human Rights 8
1 Citers


 
Practice Direction (Minor: Independent Reporter) [1983] 1 All ER 1097; [1983] 1 WLR 416
1983


Children, Litigation Practice
An 'independent' reporter may not interview the ward without the court's leave.
1 Citers


 
Chamberlain v de la Mare [1983] 4 FLR 434
1983
CA
Ormrod LJ, Griffiths LJ
Children
The mother wanted to take the two infant children to New York with her new husband. The father resisted. At first instance, Balcombe J had considered both Poel and Nash, but said that without wishing to be an iconoclast, he would simply apply the criteria from the 1971 Act and follow the interests of the chilren. Held. The mother's appeal succeeded. Balcombe J had misdirected himself in questioning whether the decisions in Poel and Nash were consistent with the statute. Ormrod LJ emphasised that the court in Poel had not weighed the interests of the adults against the interests of the children but rather had weighed the effect on the children of imposing unreasonable restraints on the adults.
After discussing Moodey v Field, he continued: "The reason why the court should not interfere with the reasonable decision of the custodial parent, assuming, as this case does, that the custodial parent is still going to be responsible for the children, is, as I have said, the almost inevitable bitterness which such an interference by the court is likely to produce. Consequently, in ordinary sensible human terms the court should not do something which is, prima facie, unreasonable unless there is some compelling reason to the contrary. That I believe to be the correct approach."
Griffiths LJ said: "The welfare of young children is best served by bringing them up in a happy, secure family atmosphere. When, after divorce, the parent who has custody of the children remarries, those children then join and become members of a new family and it is the happiness and security of that family on which their welfare will depend. However painful it may be for the other parent that parent has got to grasp and appreciate that fact. If a step-father, for the purposes of his career, is required to live elsewhere the natural thing would be that he will wish to take his family, which now includes his step-children, with him, and if the court refuses to allow him to take the step-children with him he is faced with the alternative of going and leaving the family behind which is a very disruptive state of affairs and likely to be very damaging to those step-children or alternatively he may have to throw up his career prospects and remaining this country. If he has to do that he would be less than human if he did not feel a sense of frustration and, do what he may, that may well spill over into a sense of resentment against the step-children who have so interfered with his future career prospects. If that happens it must reflect upon the happiness and possibly even the stability of this second marriage. It is to that effect that the court was pointing in the decisions of Poel v Poel and Nash v Nash and it was stressing that it was a factor that had to be given great weight when weighing up the various factors that arise when a judge has to decide whether or not to give leave to take children out of the jurisdiction."
Guardianship of Minors Act 1971 1
1 Cites

1 Citers



 
 Re P (A Minor)(Custody); 1983 - [1983] 4 FLR 401
 
Gillick v West Norfolk and Wisbech Area Health Authority and Department of Health and Social Security [1984] QB 581
1984
QBD
Woolf J
Health, Children
The court refused an injunction and a declaration requested by the plaintiff against the respondents as to the possibiliity of contraceptive advice and treatment being offered to her daughters under 16 without the plaintiff's express consent.
1 Citers


 
JM (A Minor) v Runeckles (1984) 79 Cr AppR 255
1984
QBD
Mann J
Crime, Children
Mann J considered the conditions for criminal responsibility in a child under 14 and said: "I would respectfully adopt the learned judge's use of the phrase 'seriously wrong'. I regard an act which a child knew to be morally wrong as being but one type of those acts which a child can appreciate to be seriously wrong. I think it is unnecessary to show that the child appreciated that his or her action was morally wrong. It is sufficient that the child appreciated the action was seriously wrong. A court has to look for something beyond mere naughtiness or childish mischief."
1 Citers


 
X County Council v A and another [1984] 1 WLR 1422; [1985] All ER 53
1984

Balcombe J
Children, Media
The court made orders about the future of the child born to Mary Bell, who had been convicted at the age of 11 of the manslaughter of two little boys. He was asked to protect the new identities under which the child and her mother were living. Without a court order publication would not be a contempt of court. However, wardship proceedings, like other proceedings concerning the care and upbringing of children, are held in private in the higher courts and reporting them without leave may be a contempt. An order was made allowing the publication but only in such a way as to protect their identities. On the analogy of a Mareva injunction, he granted it against the world. He considered that if the court could protect proprietary interests in this way it ought also to be able to protect the interests of its wards. He was also conscious of the unfairness to the particular newspaper concerned in the case if it alone was prohibited from publication.
Administration of Justice Act 1960 12(1)(a)
1 Citers


 
W v W (Child of the Family) [1984] FLR 796; Times, 03 November 1984
3 Nov 1984

Hollings J
Children
M sought to establish that the defendant was the father of her child. Her complaint being out of time, she had to rely upon section 2(1)(b) to establish responsibility. The putative father had not given her money for maintenance but had contributed to the cost of a pram, and had given trousers and a jumper on his first birthday. Held: The contributions were sufficient under the section to allow the court to find him to be the father.
Affiliation Proceedings Act 1957

 
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