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.
Health Professions - From: 1990 To: 1990
This page lists 5 cases, and was prepared on 27 May 2018.
W v Edgell [1990] 1 Ch 359; [1990] 2 WLR 471
1990
CA
Bingham LJ
Intellectual Property, Health Professions
The plaintiff had been confined to a mental hospital after killing several people by shooting. He complained that when he was to be considered for release, his psychiatrist, the defendant had broken his duty of confidence by revealing his concerns about the plaintiff despite the plaintiff have withdrawn his application to a non-secure unit. Held: A doctor's duty of confidence to his patient and the need to preserve general reliance upon that confidence could be overriden where there was a real risk of violence to others. The maintenance of a duty of confidence between doctor and patient was not a matter of private, but of public interest, and that public interest was to balanced against a similar interest in protecting members of the public against acts of violence.
Bingham LJ said: "Only the most compelling circumstances could justify a doctor in acting in a way which would injure the immediate interests of his patient, as the patient perceived them, without obtaining his consent."
1 Citers
W v Egdell [1990] 1 Ch 359
1990
CA
Bingham
Health Professions, Information
A prisoner complained that a psychiatrist employed by him to support in the hospital disclosed the results of his assessment. Held: The appeal failed. There was no sufficient duty of confidence to prevent the health professional disclosing that he thought the prisoner likely to continue to represent a risk to others: "It has never been doubted that the circumstances here were such as to impose on Doctor Egdell a duty of confidence owed to W. He could not lawfully sell the contents of his report to a newspaper, as the judge held..... nor could he without a breach of the law as well as professional etiquette, discuss the case in a learned article or in his memoirs or in gossiping with friends, unless he took appropriate steps to conceal the identity of W."
1 Cites
1 Citers
Regina v Secretary of State for Health, Ex parte Guirguis [1990] IRLR 30
1990
CA
Employment, Health Professions
The secretary of state did not have jurisdiction to intervene in disciplinary proceedings to say whether a doctor had properly been dismissed where the allegation was of personal rather than professional misconduct.
1 Citers
Valente v The General Dental Council [1990] UKPC 24
23 May 1990
PC
Health Professions
(The Professional Committee of The General Dental Council)
[ Bailii ]
F v West Berkshire Health Authority [1990] 2 AC 1; [1991] UKHL 1
17 Jul 1990
HL
Lord Bridge of Harwich, Lord Brandon of Oakbrook, Lord Griffiths, Lord Goff of Chieveley, Lord Jauncey of Tullichettle
Torts - Other, Health Professions
The parties considered the propriety of a sterilisation of a woman who was, through mental incapacity, unable to give her consent. Held: The appeal succeeded, and the operation would be lawful if the doctor considered it to be in the best interests of the patient. At common law a doctor cannot lawfully operate on adult patients of sound mind, or give them any other treatment involving the application of physical force however small ("other treatment"), without their consent. "[A]ny touching of another's body is, in the absence of lawful excuse, capable of amounting to a battery and a trespass", but it is an essential element of the tort of battery that the application of force is without lawful excuse.
Mental Health Act 1983
1 Cites
1 Citers
[ Bailii ]