The Court of Appeal has upheld a decision of the Vice-President (Hayden J) to lift an order restricting reporting of long running Court of Protection (CoP) proceedings heard in public.
The protected party (P) is Srichand Parmanand Hinduja (“SP”) who is 86 years old and suffers from dementia. The proceedings were brought by one of SP’s three brothers (Gopichand Parmanand Hinduja) and P’s daughters are also parties. The proceedings have been covered by a standard CoP reporting restriction order preventing identification of P. But the family has a high public profile through their successful business enterprises. Any reporting of the issues in the proceedings, even if P had been anonymised, would therefore have led to “jig saw” identification of P. So there has in practice been no reporting of the proceedings to date.
The Vice-President considered that identification of P, so that the case could be reported, was now in P’s best interests. The Court of Appeal agreed and substituted an order allowing identification of P and restricting reporting only of information relating to aspects of the clinical condition, healthcare, daily care and interaction of P and his wife.
Gavin Millar KC represented P instructed by the Official Solicitor as his litigation friend.
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