Inappropriate Human Rights Arguments

Daniels v Walker (CA TLR 17 May)

It would be unfortunate if case management decisions involved the need to refer to the learning of the European Court of Justice on human rights issues and for the consideration of such issues to be made more complex by the injection into them of article 6 style arguments. Judges should be robust in resisting inappropriate attempts to introduce such arguments and it was essential that counsel, and those who instructed counsel, took a responsible attitude as to when it was right to raise arguments based on the Human Rights Act 1998. The court gave ‘short shrift’ to the defendant’s contention that the judge’s order breached article 6 by barring them from calling evidence in support of their claim. Article 6 could not possibly have any application to the issues on the present appeal, the provisions of the CPR made it clear that the obligation on the court was to deal with cases justly.