Judge wrong to hear case from bed after surgery, court of appeal rules

The court of appeal has found that Richard Clayton KC, sitting as a deputy high court judge, was wrong to hear a case via video link from his bed the day after returning from hospital following surgery for a ruptured achilles tendon.

Clayton had dismissed an appeal by optician Suleman Patel against a nine-month suspension imposed by the General Optical Council over a finding of serious misconduct. Patel then took the case to the court of appeal, arguing that the way Clayton handled the appeal fell below the standard expected of the court, making the judgment unreliable.

In a judgment published on Tuesday, Lord Justice Phillips, sitting with Lady Justice Falk, rejected Patel's appeal but said Clayton should not have conducted the hearing from bed.

Court's assessment

Phillips commended Clayton's willingness to hear the case while recovering from injury, but said that, save for exceptional circumstances such as great urgency or cases requiring a specific judge, a hearing should only proceed when the judge has the tools needed to carry out the task properly. He added that although no injustice resulted in this instance, Clayton should not have sat on the case while impaired by his injury, since there was no great urgency and other arrangements could have been made.

During the hearing, Clayton acknowledged that lying prone made it difficult to navigate PDF bundles and that he was hampered in writing things down, though he later said several times that he was taking proper notes. He described the hearing as testing his stamina significantly and apologised at the end for early difficulties.

Clayton explained he had been advised not to stand for eight days after leaving hospital, was taking paracetamol, and had cleared the arrangement with senior staff at the administrative court.