Something less than ready access to the courts: Section 139 & Local Authorities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.19164/ijmhcl.v0i3.325Abstract
Psychiatric patients who wish to bring legal proceedings against those responsible for their detention or treatment can face an obstacle of which better-favoured litigants are free: because of a provision contained in section 139 of the Mental Health Act 1983 they will often have to obtain the prior leave of the High Court.
This paper will consider the origins of that provision. It will then focus on two of its key elements - the requirement for leave itself and the exceptions to it - and will analyse their impact upon subsequent caselaw and upon current legal practice.
In so doing, this paper will describe an anomaly which continues to bedevil intending claimants, and will assess the extent to which it is attributable to the legal and political events of a generation ago, and to a legislative impulse which is even more keenly felt today.
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