Never say never again

After the European Commission of Human Rights pronounced in favour of the applicants - a number of the disappointed plaintiffs in the combined appeals heard in X v Bedfordshire County Council (hereinafter X) - the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter ECHR) was awaited with much interest. Although the case raised interesting issues under Articles 3, 8, and 13, tort lawyers were anxious to discover whether the ECHR would apply the controversial Osman decision, as the Commission had done, to hold that the striking-out of the plaintiffs' claims in negligence and for breach of statutory duty in preliminary hearings amounted to a breach of Article 6 of the Convention. In the result the ECHR found that there had been no breach of Article 6, but the reasoning supporting this conclusion, and its relationship to Osman, remains far from clear.