› Breach of duty — failure to assess and treat mental health — staged approach to screening
Evidence
› Admissibility
› Expert opinion — basis of opinion — rejection of underlying factual assumptions
Quick Take
1Where a trial judge rejects the credibility and reliability of a plaintiff's account of events in detention, and the factual assumptions provided to expert psychiatric witnesses are not made out, the expert opinions founded on those assumptions may properly be rejected without independent error in the treatment of expert evidence.
2A finding that a long-term immigration detainee was statistically vulnerable to psychiatric injury based on epidemiological evidence does not, without more, establish that the detainee was in fact suffering a recognisable psychiatric injury or exhibiting signs or symptoms warranting a full mental health assessment.
3An appellate court must exercise particular caution in reviewing credibility findings made by a trial judge who enjoyed the advantage of observing over 40 witnesses across more than 130 sitting days, especially where those findings were supported by extensive contemporaneous documentary records.
