Serjeants' Inn Chambers

Susanna has a wide ranging and full civil practice with an established emphasis on medical and healthcare law, including the regulation of the healthcare sector. She has advised and acted in numerous matters relating to Care Quality Commission action against care homes and hospitals, including cancellation of registration, prosecution for breach of registration conditions and judicial review. Susanna has extensive Court of Protection and mental health law experience. She represents parties including the Official Solicitor in complex medical treatment, welfare, and deprivation of liberty cases, appearing regularly in the Court of Protection; she also has experience of difficult child/adolescent medical cases heard in the Family Division, overlapping with care proceedings. In mental health law Susanna regularly advises and represents NHS Trusts in high-security psychiatric tribunal cases including restricted patient applications. She has represented patients in First Tier and Upper Tribunal matters as well as judicial review and habeas corpus cases, and provided advice to Trusts and patients in relation to human rights breaches and unlawful detention claims. In police law, Susanna has a developing practice as a junior and a particular interest in public order law; she is co-author of ‘Public Order: Law and Practice’ (OUP, 2012). She has advised the police in relation to public order and operational policing concerns, as well as data protection and freedom of information matters in which she is able to draw on experience developed in her healthcare practice. Susanna is also regularly instructed in inquests involving police, NHS Trusts and prison deaths and has acted for families, NHS Trusts and the Ministry of Justice.

Call 2009; pupillage at Serjeants’ Inn October 2009 – October 2010; tenancy at Serjeants’ Inn October 2010 to date. Publications of note: ‘Public Order: Law and Practice’ (OUP 2012); contributing editor to the ‘Medical Law Reports’. Susanna also writes for ‘Police Professional’.

ALBA; Bar Pro Bono Unit; FRU.