Parkin v HM Coroner for North Lincolnshire & Grimsby District

On an application to quash an inquest and order another, the court must ask whether a fresh inquest is necessary or desirable in the interests of justice. It is unnecessary to show that the new evidence would probably produce a different verdict. It is enough that the evidence could possibly do so and that it should be explored publicly before a jury. The court may allow a fresh inquest where new evidence exposes an insufficiency of the original inquiry and could materially alter the factual picture, even if the evidence might ultimately support the original verdict. The court should assess the evidence in the round, without deciding its truth or predicting the eventual verdict.

Bradley Parkin, aged 17, was found dead at his school on 22 February 2000. The coroner recorded death by hanging and returned an open verdict because he was not satisfied that suicide, rather than accident or a deliberate act without an intention to die, had been established.

Bradley's mother appealed under section 13 of the Coroners Act 1988. She relied on statements from family members and pupils which could contradict or qualify evidence given at the original inquest about Bradley's school relationships, a performing-arts job and his exclusion from the drama club. The issue was whether the new material made another inquest necessary or desirable in the interests of justice.

1. Appeal allowed. The court directed that a fresh inquest be held before a different coroner.
2. The statutory question was whether, because of insufficiency of inquiry or the discovery of new facts or evidence, another inquest was necessary or desirable in the interests of justice under section 13(1)(b) of the Coroners Act 1988.
3. The question to be determined at the inquest was how the deceased came by his death, under section 11 of the Coroners Act 1988 and Rule 36 of the Coroners Rules 1984. Since the death preceded the Human Rights Act 1998, the applicable approach to that question was the approach described in R v HM Coroner for North Humberside ex parte Jamieson [1995] QB 1, rather than the Article 2 approach discussed in R (Middleton) v West Somerset Coroner [2004] 2 AC 182. The court recorded that the House of Lords had left the position for pre-Human Rights Act deaths open in Middleton and Sacker.
4. Applying In re Rapier [1988] 1 QB 26, it was not necessary to show that a fresh inquest would probably reach a different verdict. It was sufficient that a different verdict was possible. The purpose was to allow uncertain new evidence to be tested in public, where its credibility and effect could be assessed after examination.
5. The new witness evidence materially widened and altered the evidential picture. It could undermine the headteacher's account and indicate school-based difficulties affecting Bradley. It might make suicide more likely, rather than less likely, but that possibility did not prevent a fresh inquest. The court was not required to determine the truth of the evidence or predict the verdict.
6. The forensic report, considered alone in its incomplete form, would not have justified the appeal. The witness evidence, considered in the round, established the necessary basis for a new inquest. The claimant was granted the ancillary order sought in relation to detailed assessment of her legally aided costs, with no order for costs against the coroner.

The judgment records an appeal under section 13 of the Coroners Act 1988 from the open verdict at Bradley Parkin's inquest. No separate lower-court citation is stated.