The High Court dismissed a judicial review challenge to an emergency care order after finding that the order had expired and the claim was moot. Mr Justice Noonan said the court did not need to consider the applicants’ other arguments.
The applicants, identified in the judgment as L.O’G. and P.F., sought a declaration that an emergency care order made on 7 July 2015 concerning their child, S.O’G., breached the principles of natural and constitutional justice. They complained that the District Court made the order in their absence without giving them an adequate opportunity to be heard.
The order placed the child in the care of the Child and Family Agency (CFA) for eight days and directed that she be placed with her maternal grandmother. The CFA had applied after concerns were raised about bruising observed on the infant. A consultant paediatrician described the injuries as likely to be non-accidental and said there was no satisfactory explanation from the carers. Those were the concerns and medical opinion recorded in the judgment; the High Court made no finding about how the injuries occurred.
The parents arrived at court with their solicitor shortly after the hearing. The following day, the District Court declined to vacate the order but invited them to make a further application. The emergency order expired on 14 July 2015. After hearing both sides that day, the District Court made an interim care order for a further eight days. On 22 July, the parents undertook to move in with the child’s maternal grandmother and resume her care; the court then made a six-month supervision order instead of a care order.
The applicants argued that their inclusion on the Child Protection Notification System could cause ongoing prejudice, and that the short notice before the emergency application was an exceptional reason to hear the case despite its expiry. The CFA argued that the expired order no longer had practical effect.
Mr Justice Noonan held that a declaration about the emergency order could not benefit the applicants. He said the later interim care order followed an inter partes hearing and was not challenged in these proceedings. He also found that the child-protection listing was separate from the District Court proceedings and could have occurred without them. The court found no exceptional circumstance warranting a departure from the usual approach to moot claims, and dismissed the application without ruling on whether the emergency order had been made in breach of the applicants’ rights.