Precedents & Anonymity

Jonathan Mitchell QC was the senior counsel representing the petitioner in the case or C-v-C (or NJC-v-NPC) I wrote about in this earlier post. The father was representing himself and there was indication that he intended to drag out the hearing. I believe it is a common problem that litigants in person have difficulty in keeping their submissions tight and because they don't know the rules of evidence bring out material which, for one reason or another, isn't relevant. Invariably cases take longer and in NJC-v-NPC there was a degree of urgency so an order was sought limiting how long the parties might address the court. See Jonathan's post C v C: a precedent for fixed time limits on speeches in the Court of Session

The opinion in this case was anonymised and a few weeks ago I was somewhat surprised to see an article on the net about extradition proceedings running in parallel to NJC-v-NPC which named the father. Apparently something similar happened to the father who recently won an appeal overturning decisions by sheriffs in Aberdeen and an English Court that the child residency case should be heard in English courts (RAB v MIB) . Jonathan covers this in another post Anonymity and privacy in case reporting in Scotland and makes the point it is hard to defend the publication of sensitive personal information of named persons, yet Scottish courts do this all the time.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say it's great that at last someone in the legal profession in Scotland is posting about family law.