Fact-finding and probability: the importance of asking the right questions

Re D (Fact-Finding Hearing: Medical Treatment) [2014] EWHC 121 (Fam) (Mostyn J)     

Practice and procedure - Fact finding

Summary

This decision in a fact-finding hearing relating to children merits note here because of the helpful summary of the relevant legal principles which are - we suggest - directly applicable to fact-finding hearings in proceedings in the CoP where it is alleged that a third party has caused harm to P.

The question that Mostyn J had to decide (as the first stage in care proceedings brought by a local authority) was whether the mother of a young child who had spent her entire life in hospital had deliberately switched off her oxygen supply. It was common ground that there was a closed class of possible scenarios: (1) the oxygen supply was not in fact turned off and the nurse who asserted that it was was mistaken in believing that it was; or (2)...

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