Sheela Jogula Ramaswamy v General Medical Council

A final High Court judgment cannot be reopened merely because subsequent events would have produced a different result, or because circumstances later changed. This applies even where a later decision-maker revokes an interim order previously upheld by the Court. Reopening requires exceptional circumstances and a course necessary to avoid real injustice. A practitioner who elects to have an interim-order challenge determined immediately, and opposes an adjournment for an updated assessment, cannot later seek a second determination as though the case had been adjourned. Later developments may require the regulator to reconsider an interim order, but the proper consequence is prospective action, not retrospective alteration of the Court’s judgment or costs order.

The claimant challenged an interim conditional registration order under section 41A of the Medical Act 1983. The claim was refused in the Court’s earlier judgment, [2023] EWHC 100 (Admin), and the order included costs. The claimant then applied to reopen that judgment, revoke the order refusing her claim, reverse the costs order and record subsequent events publicly.

After the judgment, a Medical Practitioners Tribunal made findings favourable to the claimant, GMC Case Examiners concluded that there was no realistic prospect of proving current impairment by reason of adverse health, and the Interim Orders Tribunal revoked the interim order. The central issue was whether those later events created a proper basis to reopen the final High Court determination.

1. Application dismissed. The earlier judgment and Order, including the costs order, stood. The interim conditional registration order had subsequently fallen away because it was revoked by the Interim Orders Tribunal.
2. The Court had determined the claimant’s statutory challenge under section 41A of the Medical Act 1983 by conducting a risk assessment on the evidence and circumstances existing at the hearing and judgment. It was not deciding contentious factual issues definitively. Interim-order questions concern risk, evidential quality, necessity and proportionality.
3. A change of circumstances may require the GMC to reconsider whether an interim order can properly be maintained. Once the GMC concluded that the order could no longer properly be maintained, it acted promptly and secured its revocation. That removed any continuing injustice and left no new claim requiring determination.
4. A later event, or the fact that the Court would have reached a different decision had the event occurred earlier, does not justify reopening a final judgment or Order. The Court rejected reliance on CPR 3.1(7), Tibbles v SIG Plc [2012] EWCA Civ 518 and Thevarajah v Riordan [2015] UKSC 78 as providing a basis for reopening this final High Court judgment. The finality of the judgment was also reinforced by section 18 of the Senior Courts Act 1981, which made it final and unappealable.
5. The claimant had opposed the GMC’s earlier application to adjourn the claim until after the January 2023 proceedings. She had chosen to obtain an immediate determination on the evidence then available. Reopening the case on an updated basis would give her a second opportunity and would be inconsistent with that procedural choice.
6. The Court also directed that unilateral communication with the judge was inappropriate under CPR 39.8. The claimant was ordered to pay the GMC’s costs of the failed application, summarily assessed at £1,750 including VAT.

First-instance determination. The Court recorded that permission to appeal had been refused and that the judgment and Order were final and unappealable by reason of section 18 of the Senior Courts Act 1981.