Constantine v Imperial Hotel [1944] KB 693

I will be published in the next edition of the New Law Journal (1 August 2014, p 22) on the case brought by Learie Constantine against the Imperial Hotel during the Second World War. The article is available here.

A short book of bad judges

I have written a review of this book for the New Law Journal, published on 23 May 2014, p 22.

Court and Bowled: tales of cricket and the law

The reason for recent blogging silence is that I am working on a new book, Court and Bowled: tales of cricket and the law, to be published next year.  It can be pre-ordered here.  The blurb is as follows:

'In summertime village cricket is the delight of everyone' the English judge Lord Denning famously wrote, in a case brought by someone who clearly disagreed with him.

The case was but one example of how the game of cricket cannot always avoid the law. Neighbours or passers-by get hit by stray cricket balls, protesters interrupt matches, players get into fights or take drugs, and not a few involved with the game sue each other for libel.

This book looks at a number of stories where cricket or cricketers gave rise to a legal dispute. It begins with a short history of cricket as it appears in the early law reports, including the case from 1598 which contains the very first known use of the word “cricket”. It then turns to individual cases from Victorian times to the present day.

Some of the disputes have been of fundamental importance to the game itself. The ruling in Bolton v Stone affected village and indeed impromptu cricketers everywhere, while if Kerry Packer had lost his High Court action in 1978, his cricket revolution would have been over before a ball had been bowled.

Other cases raise issues going well beyond the boundary ropes: Basil D’Oliveira’s omission by England from a tour of South Africa, for example, ended up being considered in the highest echelons of power in both countries.

All of the stories demonstrate something common to both cricket matches and court cases: behind the intrigue, entertainment and amusement of both there are real people and real human stories, with all the usual human emotions and fallibility.

The book will be of interest not only to cricket fans or lawyers but anyone interested in tales of high (and low) human drama and great ethical, moral and legal dilemmas.

The last Englishman: Colonel A D Wintle MC

I have been published in the New Law Journal (vol 163, 26 July 2013, p 22) this week, concerning the legendary Colonel Wintle. The article can be found here.

Publications

I have been published in the current edition of Criminal Law & Justice Weekly, vol 177, February 16 2013, p 105 on the proposed Alan Turing pardon. 

I am also published in the New Law Journal, vol 163, 22 February 2013, p 214, on the Parker-Hulme murder on which the film Heavenly Creatures was based.

A royal flush - the Tranby Croft scandal

I have been published in the New Law Journal on the Tranby Croft Affair - "A royal flush", vol 163, 18 January 2013, p 46

Cases, Causes and Controversies: fifty tales from the law

My book has now been published.  It can be found in Wildy's bookshops in Lincoln's Inn Archway and Fleet St, or on their website here.

Alternatively it can be ordered from Amazon here.

The blurb is as follows:

What do Prince Charles, Bette Davis, Sir Ian Botham, Mrs Victoria Gillick and a man whose family grave appeared in the background of a splatter horror film have in common?


Each of them felt they had been wronged in some way, and each went to court to try and do something about it. Sometimes their case was a purely private argument. Others brought cases of national importance, or claims which raised acute moral and ethical principles. Some won handsomely, while others lost so badly that they ended up far worse than when they started.

This new book looks at fifty legal disputes from Victorian times to the present day, where a compelling moral or legal issue was at stake, or where the background to the case was interesting, amusing or infuriating.

It begins with three Victorian murders, including the law student favourite of R v Dudley and Stephens, the case of shipwrecked sailors eating the cabin boy and later facing trial for his murder.

It then covers cases ranging from the early days of Hollywood and both world wars, through to modern day battles over superinjunctions, MPs’ expenses, the vexed relationship between religion and law, and the sometimes hazy relationship of law and sport.

Some of the stories border on the absurd. Why did the legendarily tough international sportsmen Ian Botham and Allan Lamb show no fear in the face of hostile fast bowling on the pitch, yet go to their lawyers when their old opponent Imran Khan said something they didn’t like in a newspaper?

Irony runs through many of the cases. Bette Davis was left penniless after losing her case in England and felt she had no option but to return to America and resume working for the studio she had unsuccessfully sued. But after doing so she became one of the richest and most and acclaimed actresses in history. In other cases the irony is less happy: the indigenous rights campaigner Eddie Mabo won a great victory for his people, but was shunned by them during his lifetime and never lived to see his final legal victory.

Then there are the outright tragic: the execution of the civilian Charles Fryatt by the Germans during the Great War, for example, shocked not only his own side but neutral observers of the day as well. In modern times, the blameless good citizens Dianne Pretty and Debbie Purdie were stricken with terminal illnesses and were forced to seek legal approval for their desire to end their lives at a time of their own choosing.

Written in a clear, accessible style, free of legal technicalities, the book will be of interest not simply to lawyers but to anyone interested in stories of great human interest and how the legal system tried to deal with them

J'Accuse - the Dreyfus affair then and now

I have been published in this week's New Law Journal, vol 162, 16 November 2012, p 1434 (£), on the Dreyfus affair.

A deadly secret

Published in the New Law Journal, vol 162, 28 September 2012, p 1230

New Zealand, like the United Kingdom, has a fairly comprehensive national health system, although the system does not share the same name and is in some respects perhaps not as comprehensive. Being a far smaller community the opportunities and resources for medical specialisation are necessarily fewer, for example. Nevertheless, it has long been the expectation of New Zealanders that they will receive health care on the basis of need, not ability to pay. Any identifiable exceptions to that rule over the years have always generated strident public debate.


So it was in the mid-1980s, when the government decided it would no longer pay for heart transplants in New Zealand hospitals. Instead, grants would be made available for patients to have the operations performed in Australia. To say that the measure was controversial would be an understatement. It certainly would have come as a painful shock to one Mr Tucker, a patient on the transplant waiting list at the time.

Worse was to follow for Mr Tucker. The grant subsequently offered by the government was nowhere near enough to pay for the necessary treatment in Sydney. Sympathetic newspapers picked up his plight and a national fundraising campaign was held. The campaign appeared to be successful and he travelled to Australia to await his operation.

In the meantime, however, the rumour mill had been fed some grist. It turned out that Mr Tucker had an unsavoury past, having served time in jail for indecent assault. Unsurprisingly, public sympathy for his plight started to evaporate, along with some of the promised funds for his operation.

With his life now imperilled, both by the lack of funds for the operation and the extra stress brought on by the adverse publicity, Mr Tucker applied to the High Court for an injunction restraining further publication of his past convictions.   Continue reading here.

Cases, Causes and Controversies: Fifty Tales from the Law

I have a new book with the above title being published in November, which may be pre-ordered here.  Several of the chapters have been foreshadowed in blogs on this site and elsewhere.  The blurb is as follows:

What do Prince Charles, Bette Davis, Sir Ian Botham, Mrs Victoria Gillick and a man whose family grave appeared in the background of a splatter horror film have in common?


Each of them felt they had been wronged in some way, and each went to court to try and do something about it. Sometimes their case was a purely private argument. Others brought cases of national importance, or claims which raised acute moral and ethical principles. Some won handsomely, while others lost so badly that they ended up far worse than when they started.

This new book looks at fifty legal disputes from Victorian times to the present day, where a compelling moral or legal issue was at stake, or where the background to the case was interesting, amusing or infuriating.

It begins with three Victorian murders, including the law student favourite of R v Dudley and Stephens, the case of shipwrecked sailors eating the cabin boy and later facing trial for his murder.

It then covers cases ranging from the early days of Hollywood and both world wars, through to modern day battles over superinjunctions, MPs’ expenses, the vexed relationship between religion and law, and the sometimes hazy relationship of law and sport.

Some of the stories are border on the absurd. Why did the legendarily tough international sportsmen Ian Botham and Allan Lamb show no fear in the face of hostile fast bowling on the pitch, yet go crying to their lawyers when their old opponent Imran Khan said something they didn’t like in a newspaper?

Irony runs through many of the cases. Bette Davis was left penniless after losing her case in England and felt she had no option but to return to America and resume working for the studio she had unsuccessfully sued. But after doing so she became one of the richest and most and acclaimed actresses in history. In other cases the irony is less happy: the indigenous rights campaigner Eddie Mabo won a great victory for his people, but was shunned by them during his lifetime and never lived to see his final legal victory.

Then there are the outright tragic: the murder of the civilian Charles Fryatt by the Germans during the Great War, for example, shocked not only his own side but neutral observers of the day as well. In modern times, the blameless good citizens Dianne Pretty and Debbie Purdie were stricken with terminal illnesses and were forced to seek legal approval for their desire to end their lives at a time of their own choosing.

Written in a clear, accessible style, free of legal technicalities, the book will be of interest not simply to lawyers but to anyone interested in stories of great human interest and how the legal system tried to deal with them.

The book is published by Wildy, Simmonds & Hill, with thanks to LexisNexis.

Dear Diary ...

Published in the New Law Journal, vol 162, 25 May 2012, p 726

The Duke of Edinburgh is famous for his less-than-politically-correct remarks. Wincing as they often are, he seems to get away with it because he has otherwise been content to play a silent second fiddle to his spouse, who in turn has almost always studiously observed the requirement of her role to be seen as above the political fray, devoid of any revealed political opinions. 

By stark contrast, their eldest offspring, the Prince of Wales, seems rather taken with his own opinions and has rarely been shy about expressing them, whether on modern architecture, the environment or the Human Rights Act. In 2005 his propensity to speak out landed him in some bother when a disloyal subject leaked some of his private journals to the press.

The journals concerned his trip to Hong Kong in 1997, when that particular slice of the rump of the Empire was being returned to China in what was inevitably referred to as the Chinese Takeaway.

Continue reading here.

Warner Bros v Nelson: a screen siren comes to court

I have been published in this week's New Law Journal (vol 176, 18 May 2012, p 690) on the civil action of Warner Bros v Mrs Ruth Nelson.  To her generation Mrs Nelson was one of the greatest film stars of all time.  To my generation I suppose her eyes are more famous than her films, and the picture above gives some clue as to why that might be.  But to every generation she was (and is) known by her childhood nickname followed by her maiden name: Bette Davis.

The article will appear here in due course.With thanks to Guy Skelton for reading a draft of the article and providing invaluable comments.

Brewer v Mann: another vintage Bentley

No sooner had my earlier article on Old Number One Bentley been written than I had the pleasant surprise of reading about another mechanical survivor from the blood and thunder days of the Bentley Boys featuring in court. Once again the question of originality arose in the context of a classic Bentley whose purchaser alleged it was not the car they had thought it to be.


The case was brought by the ironically named Mercedes Brewer against the well-known vintage Bentley dealer Stanley Mann, his company and a finance company. Mrs Brewer, with the finance company’s help, paid £425,000 for a 1930 “Speed Six” model sold by Mr Mann.

After a year’s happy motoring Mrs Mann suddenly stopped paying the hire instalments. She contacted an auction house, who said that the car was unworthy of the description “Speed Six”, because that applied to a particular type of engine which had only been added to her car during a later restoration. Meanwhile, the finance company had repossessed the car and sold it back to Mr Mann for the same price as Mrs Brewer had paid. Mr Mann then restored it further and sold it on for some £675,000.

At that point, one might have assumed, there would be no dispute – Mrs Brewer had disposed of the car, the finance company had got its money back and Mr Mann had made a profit. Yet the first two were still unhappy: Mrs Brewer felt she had been misled, while the finance company had incurred costs of about £61,000 in recovering and storing the car before Mr Mann bought it back. Mrs Brewer was first out of the blocks issuing proceedings.


Continue reading here or see the New Law Journal, vol 176, 6 & 13 April 2012, p 510. This article will also form part of my forthcoming book Law Stories.

Old Number One or New Number One?

I have been published in this week's New Law Journal, vol 162, 24 February 2012, p302, on the case of the vintage Bentley.

The fugitive: Roman Polanski

I have been published in this week's New Law Journal (Vol 161, 9 December 2011, p1714) on the libel action of Roman Polanski from earlier this century. 

No freedom of speech

Published in Criminal Law & Justice Weekly, Vol 175, September 10, 2011, p 527

When discussing religion and the law in this journal and elsewhere, I have consistently argued for free speech and for a complete separation of church and state. The counterpoint that others have expressed is that religion has been subordinated to other rights such as gender and sexual orientation.


I would maintain that the approach I have advocated is equally applicable to defending religion. I have been asked for some examples in support of that proposition. One obvious one concerns the sad tale of Harry Hammond’s street protest in Bournemouth in October 2001. It also provides a classic illustration of freedom of speech in the context of religion.

Continue reading here

Template for the pitfalls of fame: the Fatty Arbuckle scandal

I have been published in the New Law Journal Vol 161, 12 August 2011, p 1150 on the trials of Fatty Arbuckle.  It can be found here.