(Family Division; Munby J; 29 December 2006)

A 76 year old man, blind and with significant short-term memory loss, who had been placed in a residential care home, but who repeatedly expressed his wish to go to live with his wife at home, had been and continued to be deprived of his liberty by the local authority. The simple reality was that the man would be permitted to leave the residential care home, and released into the wife's care, only as and when the authority considered it to be appropriate. A person could be as effectively deprived of his liberty by the misuse or misrepresentation of even non-existent authority as by locked doors and physical barriers. A final hearing was to determine issues of capacity and justification.