The High Court upheld the Circuit Court President’s decision not to hear an appeal by D. Han. after he had recovered and been discharged from involuntary detention. Mr Justice Charleton held that the Circuit Court had no statutory jurisdiction to hear the appeal once he was no longer detained under an admission or renewal order.
D. Han. had been admitted to a mental hospital in June 2007 under the Mental Health Act 2001. A Mental Health Tribunal affirmed the detention order, and he appealed to the Circuit Court. Further detention orders and appeals followed during his treatment. In August, an earlier renewal order was revoked after he wished to remain in hospital as a voluntary patient. A new involuntary admission order was made in September. In October, a consultant psychiatrist considered him well and revoked the second renewal order. He then left inpatient care.
The Circuit Court President had struck the appeal from the hearing list as moot. D. Han. challenged that decision in the High Court. The judgment identifies the issue as whether a person discharged before a Circuit Court appeal can have that court review the earlier detention on a historical basis.
Section 19 of the 2001 Act allows a patient to appeal a Tribunal decision affirming an order on the ground that the patient is not suffering from a mental disorder. The High Court read the provision’s present-tense wording as limiting the Circuit Court to the patient’s condition at the time of the hearing. Its role was to affirm or revoke the order based on that current condition; it could not determine whether the patient had been wrongly detained in the past or award damages under the Act.
The judgment distinguished that appeal from a review by the Mental Health Tribunal. Under section 28, a discharged patient may request completion or commencement of a Tribunal review. That review can examine the earlier detention and whether statutory procedures were followed. But, the High Court held, discharge did not create a further appeal to the Circuit Court over the Tribunal’s historical review.
The court also rejected the argument that the issue remained live because detention might recur. It noted that any future detention would be subject to the Act’s review procedures and that a Circuit Court appeal would be available if the patient remained detained when it was heard.
The High Court concluded that the Circuit Court President was correct to refuse the appeal because there was no jurisdiction after D. Han. had been discharged. It added that appeals concerning a detained patient’s current condition should be dealt with promptly, noting that an earlier appeal in this case had been put back for hearing until October.