Matthew Fletcher and Jyoti Wood appeared in the High Court case of PP v AB [2005] EWHC 3609, published yesterday.

This was an appeal against an order permitting a mother to relocate 3 young children from England to Northern Ireland on the basis that remaining in England would be detrimental to her mental wellbeing.

In the appeal judgment The Honourable Mrs Justice Morgan has given clear and important guidance on the increasingly common and problematic use of the diagnostic language of mental health conditions in circumstances where a party to family proceedings is talking not about a mental health condition but about unhappiness or distress. The court came to the following conclusions in this case  “the Recorder conflated the mother's subjective unhappiness with clinical risk and he treated her wish to relocate as likely to be very nearly conclusive about her parenting capacity or at least largely determinative of it.”

The Honourable Mrs Justice Morgan praised Jyoti and Matthew for their “diligence and hard work” and remarked that both Counsel presented their clients’ cases with “conspicuous skill”