Deprivation of liberty in intensive care – the Court of Appeal decides

The Court of Appeal has this morning (26 January) handed down judgment in R (Ferreira) v HM Senior Coroner for Inner South London & Ors [2017] EWCA Civ 31.   We will have full analysis of the judgment in the next newsletter due out next week but in the interim the headline is that the Court of Appeal has held that there will in general be no deprivation of liberty in the context of the delivery of life-saving medical treatment. This is because – Arden LJ explained (giving the sole reasoned judgment of the court:

'any deprivation of liberty resulting from the administration of life-saving treatment to a person falls outside Article 5(1) (as it was said in Austin) “so long as [it is] rendered unavoidable as a result of circumstances beyond the control of the authorities and is necessary to avert a real risk of serious injury or damage and [is] kept to the minimum required for that purpose”. In my judgment what these qualifications mean is in essence that the acute condition of the patient must not have been the result...

Read the full article here.