The Secondhand Amendment
We’re really not sure this makes things any better with regard to the incredible tale that’s unfolded around the judgment in Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife.
In fact, on any interpretation we can think of, quite the reverse.
But we’d better give you some context. The quote in the image above comes from the reply to a formal complaint made by alert Wings reader Ewan Kennedy. This was it:
It’s a measured, informed enquiry, which makes clear it’s not questioning the judgment itself but the extraordinary circumstances in which, among other concerning issues, it cited entirely fictional paragraphs from preceding cases.
This is the reply Mr Kennedy received and which we quoted at that start:
And it raises more questions than it answers.
(This, incidentally, is Paragraph 6.1 of the Policy. We cannot on the face of it identify anything here which meets any of the criteria for dismissing the complaint.)
Even on its surface, though, it’s remarkable. As an explanation it amounts to “a big boy did it and ran away”. We’re told that the source of the fictitious quotes was not Judge Sandy Kemp, nor an AI bot, but “a judicial colleague” – someone who isn’t named and therefore cannot be held accountable by or to anyone. We’re not told anything about what this person said or the circumstances, timing or extent of this “correspondence”.
For such a serious matter, that’s about as good as this:
But what if it were true? What exactly are we being told? Because the thing is, the quotes are still fictitious. Whether it was Judge Kemp or our mysterious John or Jane Doe who made them up, they were still made up.
Which means that Judge Kemp not only farmed out key aspects of his decision to someone else who was not responsible for it – someone whose level of knowledge of the case we can only speculate about – who fed him some imaginary precedents, but that he also used them to inform his judgment without even conducting a basic check of the fake citations they gave him.
We’re sorry, but that requires further explanation, to say the very least. Because what if, for example, our John Doe turned out to be this person?
We should emphasise that we have no reason whatsoever to believe it IS Dr McCloud. We don’t even know if he would be classed as “a judicial colleague”. But since we’re told nothing about the enigmatic source, it stands to reason that it COULD be, and we presume we don’t have to explain just how bad it would be if someone with a clear vested interest in undermining the Supreme Court verdict were to have influenced a judgment like the Peggie one – and doubly so on the basis of invented citations.
(The same category could also include the “campaigning KC” mentioned in the Times piece, the increasingly worryingly unhinged Jolyon Maugham. Once again, we have no reason to believe that it was him.)
It is not a satisfactory defence to having been caught including fake citations in your judgment to say “Well, it was actually someone else, but I’m not telling you who” and expect that to be the end of it. We invite readers to imagine the short shrift an accused person would get from the bench if they attempted such a plea in a trial.
(Indeed, we’re told by well-informed figures within the legal system that the response in itself likely amounts to new and separate grounds for appeal, above and beyond those that Sandie Peggie’s team already intend to deploy.)
As Ms Muir notes in her response, the judgment was issued in the name of Judge Kemp and it is he who is wholly responsible for it. This site has been documenting for several years the woefully inadequate levels of accountability and transparency across all of Scotland’s establishment and civic society, but in particular the Scottish judicial system, and this is as starkly glaring a case as could be offered in proof.
(The fact that Judge Kemp must have known the intense scrutiny his judgment would be subjected to in such a high-profile and political case, but delivered it in such deeply flawed condition anyway, is especially unfathomable except as the behaviour of someone who feels able to act with total impunity.)
In no remotely respectable country should it be possible for courts to issue judgments based on easily-proven fabrications, and then simply wave those fabrications away as minor clerical errors while pointing the finger at unnamed phantoms.
But that, readers, is where we currently stand.
“Whether it was Judge Kemp or our mysterious John or Jane Doe who made them up, they were still made up.”
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If the judicial (If not judicious) colleague used AI then that COULD have generated the algorithmic “hallucination” that was imported, one step removed, into the Judge Kemp findings.
Judge Sweeney in the Darlington nurses case had no such problem. And delivered findings aligned with Common sense!
A most excellent informative article Rev Stu. And a thanks too to solicitor Ewen G Kennedy for his excellent complaint of misconduct against judge Kemp
The plot most certainly thickens. There certanly seems much more to the issue of the correction issued by judge Kemp, and the president’s response to Mr Kennedy’s complaint very much reinforces that.
Obfuscation and failure to address judicial breaches raises some very grave concerns. And I say this as the Scottish Government potentially within days faces the prospect of being held in contempt of court for failing to disclose information it was ordered to provide.
Too many people do not have insight into the political shennanigans that are going on. This type of investigative reporting is so desperately needed.
So good stuff Wings, and good stuff Mr Kennedy. And in relation to Mr Kennedy, if he be the same one, maybe Wings would consider a piece into the background of the Oban Sheriff Court imposing a brutal restricive American corporate style SLAPP on behalf of a billion pound fish farm business against an environment campaigner.
* SLAPP = strategic litigation against public participation.
A long time reader and admirer of the site but rarely a commentator.
What I would say is that the ‘compliant’ was submitted Christmas Eve and the reply was composed and sent over 4 working days (excluding Bank Holidays and weekends).
What kind of thorough investigation could have taken place in 4 days and over the Christmas period as well, when as we all know,
government moves from slug to sloth pace.
Lots of follow-up questions and clarifications to be asked of Sandra Muir?
Surely not another cover-up?