Sexually motivated conduct and ‘common sense’. The Court of Appeal concludes that in the absence of a ‘plausible innocent explanation’, the facts in this case ‘spoke for themselves’.
In the recent Court of Appeal judgment (20 May) of Haris v GMC, the Appellant had been granted permission to appeal on the sole ground that the lower court was wrong to consider that the only rational conclusion to be drawn from his conduct during patient examinations was that the motivation for the touching was sexual.
In decisively dismissing the appeal, Lady Justice Andrews states that “As a matter of common sense…[t]he behaviour was not just capable of being reasonably perceived to be overtly sexual, it was overtly sexual, and there is no other way in which it could have been perceived. A doctor, of all people, would have known that”. (para 37)
Well worth a read! A copy of the judgment can be found here: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2021/763.html