Island hopping in a sea of evidence: Roach v General Medical Council [2024] EWHC 1114 (Admin)
In Roach v General Medical Council [2024] EWHC 1114 (Admin), Ritchie J provided a comprehensive overview of the proper approach to appeals founded on a challenge to findings of fact made at Stage 1 by a professional tribunal.
The judgment is worth reading in full but the key points are as follows.
In addition to serious procedural or other irregularity, there are three standard gateways through which a tribunal’s decision might be “wrong”: failure to give sufficient reasons, Wednesbury unreasonableness and, perhaps controversially, wrong but not Wednesbury unreasonable
In relation to this last, Ritchie J concluded that there are three threshold principles set out in the case law which make the gateway difficult to open:
- deference to the tribunal,
- the advantage of the tribunal which heard live evidence, and
- the generous ambit given in determining where a conclusion might reasonably be drawn from the evidence.
He held that in order to be satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the findings of fact were wrong, the appellate Court will need to consider first why the tribunal was wrong – a lack of evidential foundation, a failure to give weight to relevant matters, a mistake or misunderstanding of evidence – and second whether that reason is sufficiently powerful to surmount the three threshold principles set out above.
Ultimately the test for the appellate Court to apply is to determine whether no reasonable judge would have made the finding of fact or whether there was no evidence to support the finding of fact – these amount to the same thing, as no reasonable judge could make a finding of fact on no evidence.
This case, then, provides a detailed and helpful summary of the law on appeals on the facts. The decision on the facts that follows is itself a masterclass in careful analysis using the various tests set out earlier in the judgment. No doubt it will provide a framework for many grounds yet to be drafted.
Sarah Przybylska & Rebecca Malczewski
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