Our door tenant, Duncan Fairgrieve, appeared in a high profile Supreme Court case which concerned a damages claim against the police for systemic and individual police failings which led to a critical delay in the 999 system and the failure to stop the murder of a Cardiff mother of two.
The appeal and cross appeal in the Supreme Court concerned a series of important legal issues, including (1) whether and in what circumstances the police can, like the ambulance service, assume responsibility when they accept a 999 call; (2) the limits of the core immunity in negligence of the police (3) whether there is a legal obligation on the police when responding to a 999 call not to make the position of the person in peril worse; and (4) whether the combined faults of separate public bodies can be aggregated to establish a breach of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The case was heard by a seven-judge panel of the Supreme Court.
Duncan was part of the team representing the claimant.
