[2021] EWHC 1382 (QB) (24th May 2021)
Four Claimants were taken into care in 2010. They alleged that they should have been removed in 2002 or 2003, which would have prevented the majority of the abuse that they experienced.
Mrs Justice Lambert in the High Court said that this was an “omissions” or “failure to confer a benefit” case. Whilst the fact that a public authority was operating within a statutory scheme did not of itself generate a common law duty of care, it did not follow that a failure to exercise a statutory function, could never be
compensable at common law. Whether a duty of care was generated by (on the facts of this case) an assumption of responsibility depended upon whether there was “something more”. This would be either something intrinsic to the nature of the statutory function itself which gave rise to an obligation on the Defendant to act carefully in its exercising that function, or something about the manner in which the Defendant had conducted itself towards the Claimants which gave rise to a duty of care. This question was “fact sensitive”. On the facts, no duty of care was owed. There was nothing in the nature of the statutory functions being exercised by the Defendant under sections 31 and 47 of the Children Act 1989 Act or the manner in which those functions were exercised, which generated a duty of care. The Defendant had not assumed responsibility to exercise those functions with reasonable skill and care. Having looked for “something more” the facts did not fall within any category in which the common law has recognised a duty arising.
Thanks go to Malcom Johnson for the above summary which appears in our Newsletters of 2021.
For a fuller discussion of the case see the actual Newsletters of June 2021 and December 2021
To read the full judgment on BAILLII see https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2021/1382.html