McDaid v Nursing and Midwifery Council

This is an interim application on notice which was argued on 8^th July 2015 and in which I have reserved the decision to be given in writing. The application is totally without merit and is refused. I have reserved my decision in order to ensure that the position is set out very clearly without the expense of a transcript for reasons which will become obvious. Mrs. McDaid has argued her case with courtesy, tenacity and passion. She has very wide experience of the civil justice system and complains that previous decisions have been made in various ways which she says are unsatisfactory, and she suggests that this is evidence of a conspiracy against her to pervert the course of justice. The hearing before me has involved consideration of the application notice, claim form, particulars of claim and a witness statement provided by the claimant. She also supplied me with her note of a judgment given by Blake J on 22^nd May 2014. I have a bundle of documents and skeleton argument supplied by the defendant which contains an official transcript of the hearing at which Blake J gave that judgment. The Bundle has 20 tabs and 199 pages. I heard argument from both sides in open court. Apart from this, I have no knowledge of this case and have not discussed it with anyone. I have held no ex parte hearings. The claimant says that many previous hearings have included consideration of matters of which she was unaware and of bundles which had been tampered with. This is why I have set out exactly what material has been before me.

The claim form was issued on 2^nd July 2015 and says

“The NMC breached its statutory duty to me and committed breaches of contract. The NMC has been negligent with my case. The NMC has committed abuses of power and abuses of process in my case. I have been racially, physically, and sexually abused and the NMC staff who owed me a duty of care did nothing. In fact there is evidence that their barrister Anupama Thompson was behind it. Consequentially I was catatonic with mental shock and the abuse absolutely beat the spirit out of me and my daughter, as I have recovered enough to seek justice and compensation in various forms. Also, as this is a public interest case immediate action needs to be taken. I suggest a summary judgment and an inquiry by Robert Francis QC.”

The Particulars of Claim expand on those allegations and claim, by way of relief, the sum of at least £3.3m, damages for breach of contract in the sum of at least £1m or such sum as this Honourable Court may award, interest, costs, declarations of assault and battery among others, damages for all the consequential humiliation, anxiety and distress and such further or other reliefs as this Honourable Court deems fit. This document was, the claimant told me, the result of several efforts to produce a document which the Masters of the QBD would agree could properly be issued.

The interim application was issued on the same day as the claim form and seeks

“Interim relief both financially and in requiring the NMC to return to the register and take out a newspaper advertisement apologising for their actions, either directions or summary judgment, to help repair my reputation. As this is a public interest case the action needs to be immediately and a public inquiry is needed.”

The background to this case is a series of disciplinary hearings which resulted in the judgment of Blake J in the Administrative Court in McDaid v. NMC [2014] EWHC 1862 (Admin). I will not rehearse the long history which has involved multiple hearings both before the Conduct and Competence Committee of the defendant and in court. Mrs. McDaid undoubtedly feels that she has been treated wickedly by a large number of people acting in conspiracy with each other. She goes so far as to say that at least some of them have deliberately exposed her to stress in the hope that she may commit suicide. She told me that such behaviour is successful in about 10 cases a year where, she says, nurses or midwives cannot cope with stress caused by the defendant and do commit suicide. She says that her claim is a very important matter of public interest and that either she is right, in which case something should be done to put a stop to this behaviour, or she is “mad” (I quote her) in which case she should be medically examined and treated.

When I asked her what interim order she wanted me to make in the light of the lack of any power to make at least some of the orders which she had sought, she said that the very strong public interest involved in her claim meant that something had to be done and she wanted judicial scrutiny of her claim. She said that she did not seek a trial of the claim, but rather some form of judicial review of it. The claim is based on things which happened at least a year ago and often several years ago. Judicial review is not likely to be available to her because of the time limit on it, if for no other reason.

I have to decide

I am not satisfied that if the claim goes to trial the claimant will obtain a judgment for a substantial amount of money (other than costs) against the NMC. Therefore I have no jurisdiction to make an order for an interim payment by reason of CPR 25.7. None of the other conditions are met. The allegations made are largely based on the decision to strike off the claimant which was the subject of an unsuccessful statutory appeal before Blake J on 22^nd May 2014. That being so, they face significant difficulties of proof. The other allegations are of very serious deliberate misconduct against the claimant and it is not possible to conclude that they are likely to succeed.

In my judgment, there is no material on which I can be satisfied that there is a real prospect that an injunction will be granted at trial requiring them to return her to the Register. That being so an interim injunction requiring the NMC to return the claimant to the register cannot be granted. There is no power to require the NMC (either at trial or by way of an interim order) to take out a newspaper advertisement apologising for their actions. There is no jurisdiction to order a public inquiry. The claims for directions and summary judgment do not justify an interim application of this kind. There is no prospect of summary judgment in this case for reasons which I have already indicated when assessing the prospects of success for the purposes of deciding the claim for an injunction and an interim payment.

Therefore this claim for interim relief is misconceived and fails.

I do not intend to strike out the claim form or the Particulars of Claim. This is a matter which requires an application and argument following notice of the application to the claimant. The test for striking out a claim is not the same as that for granting an interim injunction or making an interim payment order. I should not be misunderstood as suggesting that the defendant’s application, if made, is likely to fail. The criticisms of the claim and the way it is expressed in the Skeleton Argument served in opposition to this application plainly have force. However, fairness requires that Mrs. McDaid should have the opportunity to consider an application of this kind and to respond to it. I am therefore not going to entertain the application. Its merits will have to be decided on a later occasion.

In my judgment it follows that I should also decline to make a General Civil Restraint Order. I anticipate that the defendant will apply to strike out this claim and, if it succeeds in doing so, a General Civil Restraint Order is very likely to be made given the history of these proceedings and of other proceedings brought by this claimant. Since I have left the fate of the claim open, I consider that I should do likewise with the General Civil Restraint Order.

The claimant must pay the costs of this failed application. These are claimed at £3,000 in round figures. A significant amount of the work which was done in preparation for this hearing involved seeking a strike out of the claim and a General Civil Restraint Order. These submissions have not succeeded. If they do, the time spent will be recoverable under a costs order made then. It should be very cheap simply to resist a patently hopeless application such as the one I have decided. I therefore propose to reduce the costs bill on summary assessment taking these factors into account to £1,000. The claimant submits that no costs order should be made because she is owed money by the defendant under a previous order in her favour. This is disputed but it is not necessary to resolve that. Any issue will have to be resolved by a court which enforces the costs orders if they are not paid.

In the result, the Order which will be made, drawn up and sealed is as follows (I spell this out because of the criticism Mrs. McDaid has made of the absence of a sealed order following the hearing of 22^nd May 2014 before Blake J):-