Nicholas Bowen

Nicholas Bowen has a civil / public law practice and is a specialist in tort and human rights claims against public authorities. He started his career in 1988 at 29 Bedford Row and up until 1996 gained wide experience in family and general common law work. A combination of having to fight for an appropriate education for his disabled sister and experience of how some parents were treated by professionals when conducting complex child care cases, led to the development of a specialist public and civil law practice. He moved to Doughty Street in April 2005.

He has experience in many high profile negligence and judicial review claims as junior counsel and acting alone. He therefore has a thorough understanding of practice in the Appellate Courts, the Administrative Court, Queens Bench and Family Divisions. He is one of the few barristers expert in the crossover between private and public law duties on statutory bodies and has over sixty reported cases in the specialist and official law reports.

His current workload includes two test cases in the Court of Appeal on the law of negligence. One (Neil Martin PLC v HMRC - news item / lawtel report) concerns whether the tax authorities owe a duty of care in tort to the taxpayer and can be held accountable for delay and for what has in the past been labelled as mere maladministration. The second (L&B v Reading Borough Council) concerns whether a social services department can be directly as opposed to vicariously liable for systems failures / poorly trained social workers. He is also acting in a series of consolidated test cases concerning the liability of local authorities for damages under the Human Rights Act for denying disabled children an effective education.

Nicholas Bowen's public law work includes all legal issues relating to the special educational needs of children and vulnerable adults, disability discrimination questions, problems relating to transport, school closure disputes, funding challenges and arguments over resource allocation, admissions and exclusions. He has advised and appeared in many groundbreaking education judicial reviews and education negligence cases but also practises in many aspects of the public and private law relating to childcare decisions, issues relating to Care Standards, POVA and the Criminal Records Bureau, the provision of health and nursing services, community care provision and mental health issues.

Nicholas regularly acts for both individuals and local government. He has an extensive professional negligence and personal injury practice in cases concerning the ill treatment, physical and sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults. He is a leading expert on failure to educate claims.

His level of expertise has been noted for some years in the various legal directories. Chambers & Partners said in the 2006 edition "observers agree that when he pulls the stops out he is one of the cleverest education barristers of his day". The previous year they said he "has impressed many with his lateral thinking abilities". According to market sources, Bowen has a "fantastic intellect" and "always gives a good skeleton of the case and produces a strong argument. Popular with parents, Bowen is particularly effective on complex judicial review and has undertaken a raft of high-profile education cases." His inventive approach has taken him to the Appellate Courts on numerous occasions, the Lawyer Magazine described him in a 2001 poll as the most successful junior in cases before the House of Lords.

His private law work has helped to establish many principles of education and tort law, which though controversial at the time are now widely accepted. Perhaps the most important being the seven judge decision of the House of Lords that teachers and educational psychologists owed a duty of care and were therefore liable in neglience (Phelps / Anderton / Jarvis / Gower; HL 2000). Other cases established that schools could be liable for bullying beyond the school gate (Bradford Smart v West Sussex County Council; CA 2002); that local authority education officers did owe children a duty of care in negligence (Carty v London Borough of Croydon; CA 2005 & QBD 2004); that a claim for damages in respect of alleged emotional and psychological damage resulting from negligent misdiagnosis of dyslexia could amount to a personal injury for the purposes of the Limitation Act 1980 (Robinson v St Helens MBC; CA 2002). Given this background in professional negligence litigation Nicholas is also a member of the Clinical Negligence team and accepts clinical negligence and general personal injury work.

He spent much of 2005 advising and acting in the challenge to the hunting ban in England and Wales and also advised in the earlier challenge in Scotland [Countryside Alliance & ors v Attorney General & DEFRA; July 2005]. He has an interest and has acted in significant judicial review challenges to the operation of the Home Office ex gratia scheme for compensation of victims of miscarriages of justice (Grecian v Secretary of State for the Home Office; Daghir & ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [QBD 2005 & 2004]. He appeared for the Claimants in the successful challenge to the Department of Health's refusal to hold a public inquiry into the Shipman murders, which led to Dame Janet Smith's public inquiry [R v Secretary of State for Health, ex parte Wagstaff & ors: R v Secretary of State for Health, ex parte Associated Newspapers Ltd & ors (2000)]. The principle established was then used in similar challenges to Government refusals to set up public inquiries into the Foot and Mouth disaster [R(Persey & ors) v DEFRA; R (Associated Newspapers & ors v DEFRA; 2002)] and the criminal activities of the dangerous Doctor, Richard Neale [R(Howard & Wright-Hogeland v Secretary of State for Health (2002)]. He was also junior counsel in International Transport Roth GMBH & ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department (2002) when the Court of Appeal declared the Government's system of penalties under the Immigration & Asylum Act for the carriage by hauliers of clandestine entrants, incompatible with the hauliers' Convention rights. He has also appeared in the case which established that the police could arguably owe a duty of care to a child during a video disclosure interview and to her father, erroneously accused of sexual abuse [L&J v Chief Constable of the Thames Valley Police; CA 2002) and also appeared in Hall v Simons (2000) when a seven judge House of Lords abolished barristers immunity in negligence.

His public law work has also involved many difficult judicial review and statutory appeals on the construction and meaning of the Education Act 1996 and challenges to Legal Services Commission funding decisions. He recently represented the Claimants in the leading case on the operation of leapfrog appeals to the House of Lords under the Administration of Justice Act 1969 and the duties of local authorities to pay and provide free school transport (Rees v Ceredigion; CA 2005 & QBD 2004). He acted in L v J in 2003 when the House of Lords controversially held by a 3/2 majority that it was lawful and not in breach of Convention rights to educate a reinstated pupil despite his isolation from classmates and the rest of the school community. Nicholas acted successfully at 1st instance and in the Court of Appeal but lost in the House of Lords in the leading case on the meaning of "resources" in the Education Act 1996 (B v London Borough of Harrow; HL 1999). He has acted in many school closure cases (particularly relating to small rural and village schools) and cases on the significance of parental preference and the operation of schedule 27 (most notably C v Buckinghamshire County Council; CA 1999). He tried but failed to establish that children with exceptional levels of intelligence can be protected under the education legislation (S v Oxfordshire County Council; CA & QBD 2005 & 2004); established how the strike-out procedures before the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal should operate (H v R; QBD 2004) and acted for the Respondent in a challenge about section 316 Education Act 1996, appeal rights to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal and the duty of "inclusion" in mainstream schools (Slough LBC v C; QBD 2004).

Nicholas has lectured for the major legal training organisations, Legal Network TV, the Law Society Training Programme and the British Institute of Comparative Law. He is also actively involved as trustee and former Chairman of LOOK, a National Charity supporting families with children who are blind or have a serious visual impairment.

A list of cases is available on request.

last updated January 2007

Year of Call

1984

Email Address

n.bowen@doughtystreet.co.uk

Specialist Teams

Nicholas Bowen is a member of the following specialist law teams:

• Education
• Human Rights
• Medical Law & Personal Injury Team
• Public and Administrative Law