Dave Macpherson: Huge delays, and high legal costs in Coroners’ Hearings for suicide cases are indefensible

Four and a half years after our son died while in the compulsory care of Waikato DHB’s Mental Health Unit, my family got the chance to have their say as part of an independent hearings process at the Coroner’s Court.

That was four and a half years of upset, grief, anger, sleepless nights and ‘what ifs’ for our family.

That was four and a half years of fights with lawyers, protests and presentations to health and Government authorities, and spending all our spare money on our own lawyer (that part only lasted for a few months).

And it was followed by months more of the same – as a direct result of a health system that objected to being held accountable for their inaction and attempted (unsuccessfully) to get the Government to overturn the Coroner’s findings.

But, as long and painful as that time was for us, there are many families who have been – and still are – waiting longer, much longer in some cases, for their chance to tell the story of their loved ones in a Coroner’s Court.

Some families have been waiting over six or seven years for their promised Coroner’s Hearings, and in two cases mentioned in a recent media article, the families have ‘been through’ three different Coroners, and are yet to get Hearing dates.

Having a chance to speak for your dead loved one, and to put the alternative view on the care they received to that of the sham ‘internal DHB reviews’ and other medical system-mandated snow jobs, is a very important part of the grieving process. We felt enormous relief at having completed the Hearing, even well before the Coroner’s findings upheld our views.

It’s an outcome that the Ministry, and Minister, of Justice would do well to remember is one of the primary purposes of Coroners’ Hearings in suicide cases.

Unfortunately, things don’t yet seem to be moving in the right direction. Statistics from the Ministry of Justice show that the proportion of families of suicide victims waiting for hearings for more than 12 months has risen from about 30% to nearly 50% in the last five years (see graph).

These terrible delay statistics are well known to Government and its responsible Ministry of Justice arm – in the last year they have appointed eight new part-time Coroners to help cope with the workload, but at the same time have lost five full-time Coroners to retirement and other jobs – ironically the Coroner for our son’s hearing has now retired, while another was appointed as the new Suicide Prevention Office Director. They’ve stuck their finger in the dyke, but are finding the water is overflowing the flood protection wall above them!

To add insult to injury, the tax-funded institutions involved in the care of suicide victims are “lawyering up” as the Coroner in our son’s case described it, causing further delays and often massive extra legal costs for all involved. We had 4 lawyers arrayed against us – two of them QCs – but for most of the four and a half years we had to handle the case ourselves after our money ran out in no time.

On one phone conference call, my partner and I were arrayed against a QC for the Doctor responsible for our son, a QC for the Police, a medical lawyer for the DHB, a lawyer for a community care facility that had earlier been responsible for our son, a lawyer for the Coroner, and of course the Coroner himself, another lawyer. All of their holidays and other work commitments had to be co-ordinated to make anything happen, while we were often the last ones consulted, despite attempts by the Coroner’s office to be helpful.

Even though our son Nicky was a compulsory patient of the DHB when he died, the DHB twice refused to give us one cent towards our legal costs, yet spent a six-figure sum on trying to cover their backsides in the Hearing, and then to overturn the Hearing result when it wasn’t favourable towards them.

My partner Jane worked hundreds of hours to prepare materials for the Hearing, and we were extremely lucky that a good friend of the family – who happened to be an experienced QC himself, but from a distant city – helped with the final preparation and flew up to Hamilton to help with the hearing itself.

Almost all families of suicide victims are facing the same sort of legal hurdles, or worse, as they try and get a voice for their loved ones. We were lucky to get some help – most do not.

Almost all institutions involved in the mental health and legal side of theses cases are determinedly resisting change, with the honourable exception of individual Coroners and some other legal practitioners.

Minister of Justice Andrew Little, who we have a lot of time for, was reported in the media discussion as saying he might look at ‘Legal Aid’ for families in this situation – the problem with Legal Aid is that it is pathetic, because we had one and a half salaries we didn’t qualify, and even if we had, we would have been required to pay it back. And, almost by definition, if you’ve only got ‘Legal Aid’ you won’t be getting a decent lawyer anyway!

The families get their lives wrecked, and have to pay time and money for the privilege, while the ‘responsible’ authorities and their lawyers get funded to defend their system. In our case, the DHB, even though the Coroner ruled that Nicky’s death while in their care was “avoidable”, didn’t have to pay a damn thing as a result, even after their attempt to reverse the result fell over.

Justice in cases like suicides is truly not a level playing field.

The Government must recognise that, and start redressing the imbalance.

Dave Macpherson – TDB mental health blogger & Former Waikato DHB Elected Member whose son was killed by public health incompetence.