A VICTORY FOR COMMON SENSE

The Court of Appeal in this country has recently had to deal with a very bizarre scenario whereby a Borough Council brought an NHS Hospital Trust to Court to argue about who was responsible for paying for expensive care for a woman who was a patient of both the NHS Hospital but was also under the care of Social Services.

This matter was not just simply dealt with in one of the lower courts, it was actually appealed to the Court of Appeal which meant that the legal costs were likely to be extremely expensive.

Lord Justice May in the Court of Appeal along with the other very senior Judges were not impressed at all that the case had been brought to court and made a very valid point that at the end of the day both of these organisations were funded by government money and that costly litigation was not a satisfactory way to resolve the issue as in his words there was a dividing line between health care and community care “but no gap”.

At the end of teh day, the taxpayer was paying so what was the point!