England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
(MR JUSTICE HUGHES)

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2 Monday, 2nd October 2000

Monday, 2nd October 2000

1. LORD JUSTICE WARD: This is an application by a mother for permission to appeal against the order of Hughes J made on 3rd August of this year when he dismissed her appeal against orders made by the Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate Mr Quick, those orders being made in family proceedings. On 29th February of this year the Stipendiary Magistrate placed the applicant's son, P, in care and gave leave for contact to be determinative.
2. P was born on 27th August 1991. He is now nine years of age. Mrs S who has appeared before me is from Belgrade. English is not her home language but she has made her submissions to me very carefully and I have borne them well in mind. She has a number of difficulties. The first and most formidable one for my purposes is that because this is an appeal against the dismissal of an appeal it is now the rule that the Court of Appeal will only entertain the matter if it raises an important point of principle or practice or for some other compelling reason. Sadly, as Thorpe LJ made clear when refusing the application some days ago, this does not give rise to any question of principle or practice and there is not a compelling reason in the case to allow a further appeal. That is one answer to this application and one justification for dismissing it. But I readily understand that it is very important to this mother. She has lost her son into care and she has no contact with him. She is desperately concerned that far from his propering in care he is suffering in care. She points to the fact that, for example, he has had two accidents whilst in care: a stone was thrown at him in one instance and a girl hit him in the mouth with a bat in the school precints or playground and knocked a tooth out. Those were treated as accidental by the local authority. She is convinced that they amount to a lack of adequate supervision and deliberate assaults on her child. She is worried about the fact that he has begun to wet his bed when he hardly ever wet the bed at home with her. She is worried that he has been judged to require special educational needs whereas when he was at home she would care for him and he would prosper.
3. But those matters I am afraid do not go to the heart of her difficulty. Here is a case where the magistrate heard it for I think four days. She gave a carefully reasoned judgment in which she found from the facts that amounted to this child suffering significant harm at the hands of the parents. Mother is convinced that those facts were wrongly found. There was no evidence before the magistrate and clearly if there was a sufficient amount of evidence albeit the conclusions were so outside of the obvious ambit in which disagreement was possible that this court could interfere. It is the law that the Court of Appeal does not easily interfere with findings of fact. This court has a very high burden to overcome before substituting our judgment for the judgment of a judge or a magistrate who heard the witnesses and made the relevant findings. I take but one example in evidence, the social worker said it was not unfortunate for P to be take into care on his second day and at the same time to say the events were upsetting for him. I find nothing inconsistent with that and it certainly does not undermine the crucial findings of fact which included a conviction of cruelty by this lady and the fact that her solicitors may have been dilatory in appealing does not alter the fact that she has been found guilty of that cruelty. Secondly, this boy was not in school at the age when children in England go to school. The fact that he may have had some nursery school education when the mother went back to Belgrade does not alter the fact that he did not go to school as English children do when they should. There was adequate information before the magistrate that the mother was suffocating in her overprotectiveness.
4. I have read the magistrate's reasoning very carefully. I looked at Hughes J's judgment very carefully. I can find nothing to criticise either of those judgments, and in my view there is simply no prospect whatever of the mother succeeding even if she did not have the high hurdle to overcome of this being a second appeal. I feel very sorry for her. To lose one's child is the most devastating thing that could possibly happen but feeling sorry for her does not entitle me to give her permission to appeal. I am afraid that I must therefore dismiss her application.
(Application for permission to appeal refused)