Alex Forbes

Successful outcomes require mastery over both the facts of a case and the legal principles to be applied. The following cases demonstrate Alex’s abilities in both domains:

Notable Public Law Children cases

A fact finding hearing in which a young teenager made allegations of physical and sexual abuse by her father and step mother which were found proved.

Care proceedings, issued following concerns that mother had fabricated or induced illness in the children. No such findings made. Application for costs by parents.

Care proceedings. Application by mother for direction that child join parents in residential placement, for the family to be assessed.

An appeal against a decision that foreign convictions were admissible in evidence and carried presumptive weight that the offence had been committed in fact-finding in children’s cases.

Care proceedings concerning placement of 15 year old, & whether it should be secured by a care order, or whether he should be accommodated under s.20 CA.

Alex appeared as advocate to the court (instructed by the Official Solicitor). The case identified the appropriate criteria to be applied where a descendant of an adopted person seeks information from the court file about an ancestor’s birth family.

Alex was led in the Court of Appeal in a case that clarified the guidance given in Re B-S and Re B, and emphasised that in a public law context what has to be determined is not simply whether any other course is possible but whether there is another course which is possible and in the child’s interests.

In an unreported case Alex was led by John Vater QC on behalf of a father who had been accused of perpetrating multiple injuries to his young son, including multiple rib fractures, subdural bleeding and petechial bruising consistent with strangulation. The medical evidence was complicated by the existence of “BESS”, a condition that predisposes young children to subdural bleeding at reduced force. By the conclusion of the expert evidence the Local Authority sought permission to withdraw its application and the child was returned to parental care.

Earlier this year Alex, again led by John Vater QC, acted on behalf of a father in a case where a young baby had been killed by a shaking mechanism. Alex’s client had been included in the pool of potential perpetrators. At the conclusion of the case the High Court judge fully exonerated the parents, found that threshold had not been crossed, and the children were returned to parental care.