The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police v Christian Zuniga
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Sir Andrew McFarlane P |
| Judgment Date | 10 June 2021 |
| Neutral Citation | [2021] EWHC 1572 (Fam) |
| Date | 10 June 2021 |
| Docket Number | Case No: FD20P00845 |
| Court | Family Division |
[2021] EWHC 1572 (Fam)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
FAMILY DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
THE PRESIDENT OF THE FAMILY DIVISION
Case No: FD20P00845
Mr Graham Wells (instructed by GMP Legal Services) for the Applicant
Hearing date: 13 May 2021
Approved Judgment
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
Introduction
This judgment concerns an application by Greater Manchester Police (“GMP”) for orders in respect of materials currently held by GMP relating to data manipulation at a forensic laboratory, which they seek to use for an ongoing criminal investigation. The orders sought were granted at an uncontested hearing in private on 13 May 2021, with judgment to follow. This is that judgment.
Factual Background
The background to the case is an investigation begun in 2017 and led by GMP into data manipulation by the seven Respondents, who are the suspects in the case, at a forensic laboratory which, via two different companies consecutively operating at the laboratory, provided services to police forces for the purposes of identifying drug use. The forensics analysed hair, blood, and urine for quantities of illegal substances, and the results provided, some of which were falsified, were used in in criminal, family, coronial or employment cases.
The investigation has uncovered 27,000 reports which appear to have been affected, and therefore the potential injustices which have occurred as a result of the data manipulation are many and serious. It is worth recording that an investigation of this scale, complexity, and irregularity is difficult and skilled work, which necessarily takes time.
The alleged activity occurred between 2011 and 2017 at the same Manchester testing centre, the Hexagon Tower. Two companies were primarily involved, and the Defendants span both: Trimega Laboratories (“TL”) operated at the Hexagon Tower from 2009, and continued under that name (after the Ingemino Group bought TL in 2012) until they ceased trading in April 2014 and the company was liquidated by KPMG; Randox Testing Services (“RTS”), bought the equipment and methodology from TL upon its liquidation and operated at the Hexagon Tower from 2014 onwards.
The Respondents are said to have engaged in data manipulation practices for the purposes of ensuring rapid accreditation by the regulator, UKAS, by which the company could provide its forensics services to the police forces, thereby gaining commercial advantage over competitors. The object was therefore the raise the value of the company by gaining a larger market share.
This data manipulation dates back almost a decade and takes a variety of forms, including copying results and quality assurance data from one sample and pasting it into another, as well as manipulating quality controls and suitability tests, and falsifying identification of drugs and validation data.
Against this background, the seven suspects have been served as Respondents in the case on the basis that they are affected by the order, following the Criminal Procedure Rules Part 47. None has chosen to appear to oppose the application.
The alleged data manipulation first came to light in January 2017, when RTS contacted GMP following their discovery of data manipulation at Hexagon Tower. Both RTS and GMP began concurrent investigations, and RTS cooperated with GMP throughout. RTS discovered the erroneous results in the forensic data during a trial of a person accused of driving under the influence of drugs, in which the prosecution's expert evidence was challenged and, upon the defence instructing an expert, the two experts were unable to agree due to data anomalies which undermined the reliability of the report from RTS. RTS investigated this and found that the anomalies were data duplication that could only have been carried out by a laboratory assistant with extensive knowledge of the system. Their investigation uncovered that the data manipulation had been ongoing since before they purchased the laboratory and equipment in 2014.
GMP's investigation also involves the cover up of data anomalies relating in particular to two family court cases. These cases are “the Welch case” and Bristol City Council v A & A and Others (2012): in Welch a woman contested the results from TL of hair testing for drugs, and the another forensic provider was employed to test her hair; in Bristol City Council, TL's drugs testing was challenged by a woman whose children had been removed from her care on the basis of drugs use. In both cases TL's tests were contradicted by newly instructed forensics providers, and TL acted defensively, possibly for the purposes of competition with the alternative forensic providers used in those cases. Bayliss...
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