The case of Reynolds v. United Kingdom in the European Court of Human Rights has established that a claimant can in certain circumstances jump straight from a non-appellate domestic court to the European Court in Strasbourg.
This case involved a claim brought by Mrs Reynolds for compensation from the state for the death of her son. Her son, David Reynolds, had suffered from schizophrenia. On the day of his death he had contacted his NHS care-coordinator and told him that he was hearing voices telling him to kill himself. He then voluntarily went into a Council run intensive support unit as there were no beds in the local psychiatric unit. That night he broke and fell out his non-reinforced window on the sixth floor and died.
Mrs Reynolds was unable to bring a claim for compensation for two reasons. Firstly, as she was the mother of the deceased and not financially dependent upon him, there was no legal recompense for the loss she suffered. Secondly, domestic law held that as David Reynolds was a voluntary patient, the state was not liable. Death by his own hand or the hand of another did not breach Article 2 (right to life) as he was not formally detained by the state. This principle had been established in two UK cases. (However, in the recent case of Rabone v Penine Care NHS Trust in the UK Supreme Court, it was held that no absolute line could be drawn between the self-inflicted deaths of voluntary and non-voluntary patients with regard to state obligations under Article 2. Unfortunately this precedent was not available to Mrs Reynolds in 2005 when she was attempting to pursue her case through the UK courts). Mrs Reynolds’ case was therefore struck out of the County Court on the basis that there was no reasonable grounds for bringing her claim. She subsequently obtained legal advice that there was no reasonable prospect of success and her legal aid was then withdrawn on this basis.
Mrs Reynolds then brought her case to the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that in contravention of Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the ECHR, she had been denied proper redress for the death of her son as there was no mechanism by which she could obtain a civil remedy for an arguable breach of Article 2. The court firstly considered the admissibility of her case as she had not pursued appeals within her domestic court system. The court held that considering the perceived hopelessness of her case for the reasons mentioned above, she was not expected to have continued with that chain of litigation. Secondly, the court essentially agreed with the reasoning in the UK case of Rabone, that despite the fact that her son was a voluntary patient there was an arguable claim that there had been a breach of Article 2. The court further found that Mrs Reynolds had the right to pursue a civil claim for a possible breach of Article 2, and there had been no effective means or remedy to do so within her domestic system. There was therefore also a breach of Article 13.
Click here to read a blog post by the UK Human Rights blog - http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2012/03/30/from-county-court-strike-out-to-strasbourg-success/
Click here to read the judgment - http://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/2012/437.html