Regina (on the application of John Allman) 
     v
HM Coroner for West Sussex
 
 _______________________________________________

Grounds for Judicial Review
___________________________________________

SECTION 5  Detailed statement of grounds

1)	The deceased deliberately left behind evidence that “speaks from the grave”, evidence that makes it clear that he hoped for the opportunity to be given to a coroner’s jury to reach a finding of fact, in the event that the deceased was killed violently as he feared he would be, that he was, or might have been, killed unlawfully, possibly by agents of the state.  The deceased is therefore entitled to an Article 2 inquest.  In contrast, the defendant clearly considers that the deceased is only entitled to an ordinary Rule 36 inquest.  In this, the defendant misdirected herself.  It was precisely because the deceased feared a narrow, Rule 36 inquest, rather than a broad, Article 2 inquest, that he appointed the applicant to take care of his posthumous interests, so to speak, if he was killed.

2)	Although coroner’s inquests are inquisitorial rather than adversarial, the deceased deliberately made provision, in appointing the applicant to participate in any inquest into his possible violent death, for the applicant to present (so to speak) the “case” that the deceased wanted presented, at any inquest into the deceased’s violent and unexplained death.  In her oral statement of reasons on the day, the defendant misdirected herself to the effect that she was unable to grant the deceased’s express wishes, in that she fettered her discretion to grant the deceased’s express wishes, because she considered, following her own flawed understanding of Pill J in Driscoll, that properly interested persons (PIPs) in classes (a) thru (g) were “guides” to the types of “other person” in class (h), by which Pill J meant (or so the defendant misdirected herself) that a candidate PIP had to be analogous to one of the other types for the coroner to be allowed form the opinion that the candidate was a PIP.  This prevented her, she mistakenly thought, from granting the deceased’s express wishes, a decision that an ordinary member of the public might consider perverse to the point of being irrational.

3)	The defendant relied upon a number of controversial findings of fact, as the premises from which she reasoned when justifying her decision in writing.  The most glaring example is her astonishing and mistaken claim that there is no evidence of the existence of electromagnetic weaponry.  There is abundant evidence in the public domain of the existence of electromagnetic weaponry.  The applicant has been simply not been offered any opportunity to present any of that evidence.  For whatever reason, the police have not provided any of that evidence to the coroner either.  Reaching the said findings of fact amounted to prejudice on the defendant’s part.  The prejudice was over contentious issues of fact that were likely to be raised with the prominence that the deceased would have wished, in an Article 2 inquest in which the applicant was a PIP, but which were likely to be suppressed or marginalised in any Rule 36 inquest in which the applicant was not a PIP.  A ratio decidendi that reasons from false factual premises (or, at best, from facts found prematurely) is every bit as flawed as a ratio that contains a logical error in the reasoning from the factual premises to the decision made.

4)	Unfairly, late in the day before the inquest is scheduled to be held on 5th-6th May 2011, the promise appears to have been broken, that the applicant and Ms Amanda Palmer would both be called to give oral evidence, and that certain courtesies would be extended to the applicant if he attended the hearing.  The promises now broken, were referred to in the oral and later written reasons for the decision for which judicial review is now sought, as alternative mechanisms that it was hoped the applicant would find acceptable, for achieving the same objectives as his being a PIP would have achieved, thus discouraging the applicant from applying early for judicial review.  The late breaking of the promises accounts for the failure of the applicant to follow the later stages of the pre-action protocol, and the attempt to make of this application for permission to apply for judicial review only just in time for the application not to be out of time in the first instance, and his making of the present application afresh as soon as practicable following rejection of the first application because the defendant was initially the named individual deputy assistant coroner rather than “HM Coroner”, and because insufficient copies of the application were provided.

5)	If the applicant had known that the deceased was going to be killed, and had anticipated his present difficulties in keeping his promise to the decease that make this application necessary, the applicant could easily have effected a life insurance policy for a nominal sum assured on the deceased’s life.  Had he done so, he would now have fallen into class (b), and would have been a PIP.  Indeed, with the exception of spouse and mother in class (a), none of the classes (a) thru (g) require the PIP to have even met the deceased.  In applying the proximity test mentioned in Paragraph 21 of the reasons for her decision, rejecting the contract between the deceased and the applicant as a reason for considering the applicant to be a class (h) PIP because of the fewness and recentness of the occasions of meetings between the applicant and the deceased, the defendant misdirected herself.  No such test is required in law.