Posts
Your money or your wife
Both the Telegraph and the Times have the same story this week, including that hoary old chestnut the ‘meal ticket for life', and the suggestion that women get divorced for the money and if the money’s not good they don’t get divorced. ‘Lower payouts put wives off...
Secret State Kidnap – breathless headline or blunt reality?
Yesterday the Guardian published Louise Tickle's hard hitting opinion piece about failures of Herefordshire Council with the headline : The state has a terrible secret: it kidnaps our children. Unsurprisingly it has generated a lot of comment. With familiar signal...
Family Court Reporting Watch
Correcting, clarifying or commenting on media reports of family court cases Explaining or commenting on published judgments of family court cases Highlighting other transparency news MEDIA (MIS)REPORTS OF FAMILY COURT CASES Alfie Evans - We've drawn together some...
Alfie Evans: Summary and useful links
This photograph is from an article in Wired 'How Facebooks Fake News fix made the Alfie Evans story go viral' The sad case of Alfie Evans has attracted world wide attention in the last few days. There is a useful summary of the last year on the BBC news...
Press regulator upholds complaint against The Times in the Muslim Foster Carer Case
Last year The Times ran a number of leading articles criticising the arrangements for the care of a young girl placed in foster care by Tower Hamlets council, with a focus on the religious background and practices of the foster carer and their ability to speak...
Journalism, Judges and Justice – a crisis in court reporting?
A report on Open Justice from the Chartered Institute of Journalists warns of “an unprecedented, and sustained, attack on the journalism profession, which has taken a toll on our ability to cover courts, and report on their function”. Its author is Tim Crook, Vice...
Family Court Reporting Watch
Correcting, clarifying or commenting on media reports of family court cases Explaining or commenting on published judgments of family court cases Highlighting other transparency news MEDIA (MIS)REPORTS OF FAMILY COURT CASES The Telegraph - Reported the Court of Appeal...
Three examples of how not to do family justice
This week involves a trio of disastrous cases where things have gone wrong and judges have explained why. The first case is Re L (A Child) [2017] EWHC 3707 (Fam) (22 December 2017), which opens with Mr Justice Francis saying : At some point during the night of a...
Litigant’s claim struck out for discussing case during break in giving evidence – a cautionary tale
It’s one of the cardinal rules of court procedure: once you’ve entered the witness box and started to give evidence, you mustn't discuss the case with anyone outside court, if there’s a break in the proceedings, until you’ve finished giving evidence. While the hearing...
Meal ticket for life bid backfires – or does it?
The Telegraph is one of a number of newspapers to report on the decision of the Court of Appeal to refuse the appeal of Mrs Waggott asking for an increase in her divorce award, and to allow the appeal of Mr Waggot, asking for the duration of her maintenance award to...