The court of appeal has overturned a care order made in circumstances that one judge ruled were ‘fundamentally unprincipled and unfair’.

The court heard His Honour Judge Dodds made a care order for three children at the first hearing last August less than three weeks after Liverpool City Council had applied for it.

Appeal judge Lady Justice King (pictured) said a transcript of that hearing revealed that within minutes Dodds had made it ‘abundantly clear, in trenchant terms, his determination to conclude the case there and then by making final care orders’.

King reported that all parties ‘crumbled under the judge’s caustically expressed views’ and were unable to explain to him the situation was more complicated than he viewed.

The parties, including the mother, had assumed the court date would serve as a directions hearing.

The children’s guardian was not present in court and the results of a drug test – crucial to the mother’s suitability to take any children back – were not yet known.

Dodds relied on filed interim care plans that were already significantly out of date and had also been presented with a special guardianship order for two of the children who were settled with their grandparents.

King said: ‘Unfortunately, his determination to conclude the proceedings without more ado prevented any misconception he may have been under from being adequately corrected by any of the parties during the course of the hearing.’

She added that the judge had referred to the mother as looking ‘upset and bewildered’ but that it was ‘hard to see how she could have looked otherwise’ given the course proceedings were taking.

The Dodds ruling was such that neither the council nor the children’s guardian sought to uphold his order and agreed the appeal should be allowed.

In granting an appeal, Lord Justice McFarlane said Dodds had taken an approach that ‘could not have been more robust’. McFarlane had said the judge had tried to justify his approach on the basis of recent family justice reforms and it was now for the appeal court to consider how future trials are to be managed in line with the changes.

King said recent family justice reforms had ‘undoubtedly’ driven a change in culture in case management, with the Liverpool area ‘notable’ for disposing of care cases within 26 weeks.

But she said that in this case vigorous and robust case management had tipped over into an unfair summary disposal.

She added: ‘All parties agree that this is a case where the judge, in his desire to embrace and put into effect the family justice reforms, has unilaterally disposed of a case prematurely in circumstances where such a summary disposal was not only unfair to the mother but contrary to the interests of the children with whom he was concerned.’

Sitting alongside her, Sir James Munby, president of the family division, emphasised that ‘robustness cannot trump fairness’ and said Dodds had adopted a ‘ruthlessly truncated process’ which was ‘fundamentally unprincipled and unfair’.

He said the judge had failed to ensure the case management hearing was fair or that a fair trial had been arranged.

He noted that a parent who wishes to cross-examine an important witness should be allowed to do so if the case relies on that witness.

The matter will be remitted to Her Honour Judge de Haas QC, the designated family judge for Liverpool.