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04 July 2013 / Robert Weir KC
Issue: 7567 / Categories: Features , Public , Human rights
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In combat

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Robert Weir QC reports on the Snatch Land Rover case

Can soldiers or their families sue the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for a failure to provide them with appropriate equipment and training or for decisions made on the ground when, as a result, they are injured or killed in the course of active operations? Does this raise the spectre of soldiers obtaining injunctions against their commanders and refusing to go into battle on the basis that their human rights would be breached? Would this inevitably lead to defensive soldiering and impede the way in which decisions were made by politicians and military commanders in the national interest?

In Smith and others v Ministry of Defence [2013] UKSC 41, [2013] All ER (D) 167 (Jun), the Supreme Court had to tackle these issues when deciding whether to strike out claims brought for breach of Art 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to life) and in negligence by families of soldiers killed in Iraq in Snatch Land Rovers by explosions

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