Re AVS; CS v A NHS Foundation Trust [2010] EWHC 2746 (COP)
(1) AVS suffered from CJD and at a previous hearing it had been declared that he lacked capacity to instruct solicitors or make medical decisions. (2) The critical question was: 'is it in AVS's bests interests that PPS treatment continues to be administered to him?' The applicant wanted it to recommence; the Trust did not. (3) The applicant brother was not an appropriate next friend as the relationship between him and the clinicians had broken down completely and he lacked the necessary objectivity: the Official Solicitor would be invited to act. (4) The court's 'best interests' analysis embraces all the circumstances of the case, and clinical opinion is not necessarily determinative, but it is unlikely in the extreme that the court would order a clinician to undertake a medical intervention which the clinician did not believe to be in the best interests of the patient. (5) These proceedings would therefore be doomed to failure without a clinical opinion on the applicant's side. A doctor had been identified as willing to take over AVS's care and, it seemed, administration of PPS: proceedings would be dismissed after 14 days unless a report from Dr P were filed to answer the Trust's reports and identifying a proper issue for the court's determination. (6) Directions were given as to medical and non-medical witnesses, disclosure of medical records and evidence, instruction of experts and an experts' meeting.
Related judgments
Re AVS; AVS v A NHS Foundation Trust [2011] EWCA Civ 7
Other
Hearing: 25/10/10
Judgment: 2/11/10
Before: Sir Nicholas Wall P
Jeremy Pendlebury (instructed by Michelmores) for the Applicant
Fenella Morris (instructed by Hempsons) for the Respondent
Citations
AVS v NHS Trust [2010] EWHC 2746 (COP)B
Case No: COP11903702