Damian Garrido KC

Damian’s child-care practice encompasses the most complex and sensitive cases including those involving alleged radicalisation, serious injury or death, sexual exploitation, the youth or incapacity of a parent and/or issues of publicity, non-disclosure and public interest immunity.

Notable Public Law Children cases

Care proceedings. Appeal by mother against refusal by Circuit Judge to grant injunction, on the basis that she did not have power to do so. Appeal allowed. This case was reported in Local Government Lawyer.

Represented the Father who was opposing an appeal by the local authority against a fact-finding decision of HH Judge Wicks. The appeal raised important and interesting legal issues concerning the rehearing of previous findings of fact, the relevance of propensity and ‘hindsight bias’, and the caution to be applied before making exculpatory findings. This case was reported in Local Government Lawyer.

“strongly enhanced by oral argument from Mr. Garrido, who persuasively identified ways in which it might be possible … to uphold the judge’s decision” – HH Judge Wicks

Representing a vulnerable mother, where the local authority pursued lengthy allegations including FII, in circumstances where care and placement orders were unopposed and significant threshold concessions had already been made. The Court determined that a five day fact-finding hearing on the unadmitted allegations was not justified, and explored the applicable factors concerning whether or not to conduct a fact-finding exercise.

Damian advised and represented the Clinical Commissioning Group for Somerset in protracted High Court litigation relating to breaches of the Adoption Agencies Regulations 2005 (AAR 2005) – specifically a failure by its Agency Decision Maker to adhere to the regulations relating to the provision of medical reports from the Agency Medical Adviser. In this final judgment, it was decided by the President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, that although breaches of AAR 2005, reg 15/17 had occurred, an application for a declaration as to the validity of existing placement orders or adoption orders was not required or appropriate, because (a) such orders remained valid unless and until overturned and (b) in most cases where these occurred, there would rarely be a health issue, both significant yet unknown to the ADM and/or the court, that could undermine the orders’ validity.