Negligence and Article 6: The Great Escape?

Extract

When, the European Court of Human Rights decided in Osman v. UK [1999] 1 F.L.R. 193 that striking out a claim in negligence (in Osman v. Ferguson [1993] 4 All E.R. 344) against the police, for failing to prevent a disturbed teacher injuring a pupil and killing the pupil’s father, amounted to a breach of Article 6 of the European Convention, many domestic lawyers felt that human rights law had gone too far. Article 6 protects the right to a fair and public hearing in the determination of one’s civil rights. The ECtHR did not say that the hearing had not been fair, but that it had not really been a hearing at all. By so deciding, the ECtHR subjected the public policy considerations that had been relied on by the Court of Appeal to strike out the claim to the requirements of legitimacy and necessity which have to be satisfied to justify an interference with Article 6.