R v Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, ex parte A [1999] 2 AC 330
Facts
A woman applied for criminal injuries compensation following an alleged violent sexual assault during a burglary of her home. The Board rejected the application after receiving police evidence suggesting that medical examination had not supported her account. A doctor's report, however, contained material relevant to the allegation and did not justify the impression given to the Board. The applicant sought judicial review of the rejection. The litigation raised both procedural questions about the timing of that challenge and the substantive fairness of a decision reached with a materially mistaken understanding of the medical evidence.
Legal Issue
Whether the compensation decision was vitiated by objective unfairness arising from the Board’s mistaken understanding of material medical evidence, without proof of culpable fault.
Held
The House of Lords allowed the appeal and treated the decision-making process as unfair. The Board's consideration of the claim had proceeded on a materially misleading understanding of the medical evidence. Lord Slynn explained that a finding of fault by a particular participant was unnecessary where the proceedings were objectively unfair. Although he was prepared to recognise jurisdiction to intervene for misunderstanding an established relevant fact, he preferred the narrower ground of natural justice. The result therefore did not authorise unrestricted judicial rehearing of compensation applications. Nor did it impose a general investigative burden on the Board to gather an applicant's evidence where no request for further inquiry had been made.
⭐ Legal Principle
A decision may be quashed for objective procedural unfairness where a material misunderstanding of the evidence undermines the hearing. Ex parte A was decided on natural justice, while broader observations about mistake of fact require separate treatment.
Significance
Ex parte A shows that an unfair hearing can arise through a material misunderstanding of evidence even without deliberate misconduct by the decision-maker. It is also an important step towards later recognition of mistake of fact as a ground of review. Lord Slynn discussed that broader possibility but resolved the appeal through unfairness and natural justice. In an examination, identify the missing medical material and its effect on the process before asserting a general power for courts to retry disputed facts.
Common exam questions about this case
What made the compensation hearing unfair?
The Board received a misleading account of the available medical evidence and decided the claim without appreciating material that supported the applicant’s account. The resulting procedure was objectively unfair. The problem was not merely that the applicant disagreed with an assessment reached after all relevant evidence had properly been considered.
Did the applicant have to prove that the Board was deliberately at fault?
No. Lord Slynn treated objective unfairness as sufficient in the circumstances. The rules of natural justice protect the fairness of the process rather than operating only as sanctions for culpable officials. That does not impose a general obligation on every tribunal to search independently for all evidence an applicant might produce.
Was a general mistake-of-fact doctrine the decisive basis of the appeal?
The judgment discussed intervention where an established relevant fact had been misunderstood or overlooked, but Lord Slynn preferred to decide the case on natural justice and unfairness. That distinction matters when identifying the ratio. Later authorities such as E v Home Secretary develop the separate mistake-of-fact analysis more explicitly.