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District Judge Gordon Ashton, "Equal Access to Justice", The Liverpool Law Review Vol. xix no.1 (1997), 29-36. - This article considers the special needs of people with disabilities when they encounter the civil justice system, and the manner in which the Woolf Reforms could assist them. Lawyers have been relied upon to compensate for their inadequacies but with cut backs in legal aid this can no longer be assured. They can find themselves encountering the ultimate handicap - lack of access to justice ... If the needs of disabled people are not met the courts could find themselves in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. The court should be under a duty to ascertain if a party has a physical or mental impairment which substantially affects ability to participate in the proceedings, and to compensate for this ... Some people are incapable by reason of mental disorder of managing and administering their property and affairs. Law Commission report Mental Incapacity (No. 231 dated February 1995) makes recommendations as to decision-making and includes a draft Bill. The Law Society and British Medical Association have produced joint guidance in Assessment of Mental Capacity (1996). ... When an individual is incapable of conducting litigation (a 'patient') it is necessary for a representative to act: a next friend or guardian ad litem. The five existing sets of rules (High Court, county court, family proceedings, insolvency and Court of Protection) are inconsistent. The new Civil Procedure Rules should be constructed from scratch. Gordon Ashton is author of Mental Handicap and the Law (Sweet & Maxwell), Elderly People and the Law (Butterworths) and The Elderly Client Handbook (The Law Society). e-mail: ashton@law.edi.co.uk

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