swarb.co.uk - law index
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: 1960 To: 1969
This page lists 16 cases, and was prepared on 20 May 2019.
In re B (Infants) [1962] Ch 201
1962
Education, Children
1 Citers
In re T (orse H) (An Infant); ChD 1963 - [1963] Ch 238
In re K (Infants) [1963] Ch 381
1963
ChD
Ungoed Thomas J
Children, Natural Justice
Ungoed Thomas J discussed the balance of interests in a wardship case, as it affected disclosure of documents: "However, where the paramount purpose is the welfare of the infant, the procedure and rules of evidence should serve and certainly not thwart that purpose . . In general publicity is vital to the administration of justice. Disclosure to the parties not only enables them to present their case fully but it provides in some degree the advantages of publicity; and it further ensures that the court has the assistance of those parties in arriving at the right decision. So when full disclosure is not made, it should be limited only to the extent necessary to achieve the object of the jurisdiction and no further."
1 Citers
In Re K (Infants); Official Solicitor v K [1965] AC 201; [1963] 3 All ER 191
2 Jan 1963
HL
Lord Devlin
Children, Administrative, Natural Justice
The House considered the propriety of a tribunal chairman seeing material not placed before the parties. This was a wardship case. Held: Where the interests of the parents and the child conflicted, "the welfare of the child must dominate".
Lord Devlin spoke of "the fundamental principle of justice that the judge should not look at material that the parties before him have not seen".
Referring to "the ordinary principles of a judicial inquiry", he continued: "They include the rules that all justice shall be done openly and that it shall be done only after a fair hearing; and also the rule that is in point here, namely, that judgment shall be given only upon evidence that is made known to all parties. Some of these principles are so fundamental that they must be observed by everyone who is acting judicially, whether he is sitting in a court of law or not; and these are called the principles of natural justice. The rule in point here is undoubtedly one of those." and "[w]here the judge sits purely as an arbiter and relies on the parties for information, the parties have a correlative right that he should act only on information which they have had the opportunity of testing. Where the judge is not sitting purely, or primarily, as an arbiter, but is charged with the paramount duty of protecting one outside the conflict, a rule that is designed for just arbitrament cannot in all circumstances prevail."
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Official Solicitor to the Supreme Court v K [1965] AC 201
1965
HL
Children, Legal Professions
Legal representatives of a party were entitled to have disclosed to them of 'behind the scenes' investigation in a care matter in which their client was involved, but should be requested to undertake not to pass on details to their client.
1 Citers
In re P (GE) (An infant) [1965] Ch 568
1965
CA
Lord Denning MR, Pearson LJ
Children
The wardship jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery extended to any child "ordinarily resident" in this country. An infant of British nationality whether he is in or outside this country, owes a duty of allegiance to the Sovereign and so is entitled to protection.
Lord Denning MR spoke of the ordinary residence of "a child of tender years who cannot decide for himself where to live": "So long as the father and mother are living together in the matrimonial home, the child's ordinary residence is the home - and it is still his ordinary residence, even while he is away at boarding school. It is his base, from whence he goes out and to which he returns . . "
. . And "The court here always retains a jurisdiction over a British subject wherever he may be, though it will only exercise it abroad where the circumstances clearly warrant it: see Hope v Hope (1854) 4 De GM and G 328; In Re Willoughby (1885) 30 Ch D 324; R v Sandbach Justices, ex p Smith [1951] 1 KB 62."
1 Citers
Chaplin v Leslie Fewin (Publishers) Ltd [1966] Ch 71
1966
Contract, Children
The basis of a child being held to a contract is where the contract allows him to start to earn a living.
1 Citers
Re C (MA) (An Infant) [1966] 1 WLR 646
1966
Children
The court heard psychiatric evidence of the potential depth of the bond between father and child.
1 Citers
Gough (an Infant) v Thorns [1966] EWCA Civ 5; [1966] 1 WLR 1387; [1966] 3 All ER 398
1 Jul 1966
CA
Lord Denning MR, Danckwerts, Salmon LJJ
Negligence, Children
The plaintiff child was injured in a road traffic accident. She appealed from a finding that she had been contributorily negligent. Held: The appeal succeeded.
Lord Denning MR said: "A very young child cannot be guilty of contributory negligence. An older child may be. But it depends on the circumstances. A judge should only find a child guilty of contributory negligence if he or she is of such an age as to be expected to take precautions for his or her own safety: and then he or she is only to be found guilty if blame should be attached to him or her. A child has not the road sense or the experience of his or her elders. He or she is not to be found guilty unless he or she is blameworthy."
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Bradford MDC v M (The Mother) and Others [2014] EW Misc 35 (CC)
26 Jul 1966
FC
Children
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Relating to certain aspects of the laws on the use of languages in education in Belgium (Belgian Linguistics) No 2; ECHR 9-Feb-1967 - 1474/62; 1677/62; 1691/62; 1769/63; 1994/63; 2126/64; (1968) 1 EHRR 252; [1968] ECHR 3; [1967] ECHR 1
B (M) v B (R) (Note) [1968] 1 WLR 1182
1968
CA
Willmer LJ
Children, Costs
The court suggested that it would have been wrong to make an order for costs in a custody dispute because it would exacerbate the feelings between the parents to the ultimate detriment of the child.
1 Citers
In Re Mohamed Arif (an infant) [1968] Ch 642
1968
Russell LJ
Children
The control of the wardship court over the person of its ward is far from absolute. It is ousted in a wide variety of situations in which the law has entrusted such controlled persons other than those having responsibility for the upbringing of the ward. This limiting principle may be expressed more generally by saying that the wardship court has no power to exempt its ward from the general law, or to obtain for its ward rights and privileges not generally available to children who are not wards of court; or by saying that the wardship court can seek to achieve for its ward all that wise parents and guardians acting in concert and exclusively for the interest of the child could achieve, but no more.
In re Mohamed Arif (An Infant) [1968] Ch 643
1968
CA
Russell LJ
Immigration, Children
Russell LJ said: "When an infant becomes a ward of court, control over the person of the infant is vested in the judges of the Chancery Division of the High Court. It is for the judge to say by order from time to time where the ward is to reside and with whom, and disobedience to such an order is contempt of court by anyone who knowingly breaches or is party to a breach of that order. Moreover, even without any judge's order forbidding it, it is a contempt to remove a ward outside the jurisdiction of the High Court. It is, however, quite obvious that there are circumstances in which control over the person of a ward is not committed or referred to the judge but is by the law of England committed or referred to another agency or person. As a simple illustration, it could not be contended that the judge would have any jurisdiction to order that a criminal ward be transferred from place of detention A to place of detention B, however much of the medical evidence before the judge suggested that the ward would be in better health at place of detention B. The reason is that the jurisdiction of the judge over the person of the ward is necessarily restricted by the fact that the law has given that aspect of control over the ward's person exclusively to another agency. Similarly, the judge would have no right to complain of or countermand a lawful posting overseas of a ward who was in the armed forces. The law refers the military control of the ward to the military authorities. Similarly, any lawful deportation order affecting a ward must be outside the normal position which I have mentioned already, that a ward must not leave the jurisdiction without permission of the judge; indeed, it would override any existing express order of the judge in the wardship proceedings that the infant was not to depart from the jurisdiction."
1 Citers
In Re Holt's Settlement [1969] 1 Ch 100
1969
ChD
Megarry J
Trusts, Children
An application was made to vary the terms of a trust in favour of children. Held: The court was ready to receive evidence from a mother whose children were due to become entitled to funds at the age of 21 that she believed it most important that young people should be reasonably advanced in a career and settled in life before they were in receipt of an income sufficient to make them independent of the need to work. Megarry J, "speaking in general terms" fully concurred, and approved an arrangement which postponed vesting of their interests.
1 Citers
J v C (An Infant) [1970] AC 668; [1969] UKHL 4; [1969] 3 WLR 868; [1969] 3 All ER 1140
19 Feb 1969
HL
Lord MacDermott, Lord Guest, Lord Upjohn
Children
The House sought to construe the meaning of the words "shall regard the welfare of the infant as the first and paramount consideration". Lord MacDermott said: "it seems to me that they must mean more than that the child's welfare is to be treated as the top item in a list of items relevant to the matter in question. I think they connote a process whereby, when all the relevant facts, relationships, claims and wishes of parents, risks, choices and other circumstances are taken into account and weighed, the course to be followed will be that which is most in the interests of the child's welfare as that term has now to be understood. That is the first consideration because it is of first importance and the paramount consideration because it rules upon or determines the course to be followed." and
"In applying section 1, the rights and wishes of parents, whether unimpeachable or otherwise, must be assessed and weighed in their bearing on the welfare of the child in conjunction with all other factors relevant to that issue.
While there is now no rule of law that the rights and wishes of unimpeachable parents must prevail over other considerations, such rights and wishes, recognised as they are by nature and society, can be capable of ministering to the total welfare of the child in a special way, and must therefore preponderate in many cases. The parental rights, however, remain qualified and not absolute for the purposes of the investigation the broad nature of which is still as described in the fourth of the principles enunciated by FitzGibbon L.J. in In Re O'Hara [1900] 2 I.R. 232, 240."
Guardianship of Infants Act 1925 1
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