By Clare Fuller, 4th January 2021

Uncomfortable questions were raised for me when I witnessed the hearing (COP 13861502 Re MW) on 13^th December 2021 before Sir Andrew McFarlane, President of the Family Division (also blogged here: “Patient dies in hospital as Trust fails to comply with Mental Capacity Act 2005”).

When I joined the hearing, I was unaware that the lady at the centre, Mrs W, had sadly died the previous evening.

Learning this, in the opening minutes of the hearing, added an emotive element and changed the hearing from a decision-making process about Mrs W’s future to a more unusual “lessons to be learned” situation.  

It was, as counsel said “a profoundly sad time” for the family, who had also experienced the death of their father just twelve days earlier.

As the case opened, we learned that the Trust (theLondon North West University…