Judge P N Brandt’s springer spaniel slept at his master’s feet. In court in Colchester, of course. The dog was reputed to relax litigants and witnesses by its presence. Whether the judge left it to the pet to alert advocates that they were barking up the wrong tree, is unknown. All very sweet, but the practice was bound to lead to trouble. A defendant who picked up a £6,000 judgment from the judge and Barty was reported to be seeking a retrial on the ground that the dog had snored during his hearing and distracted him. I know this story to be true as I plagiarised it from one of my ‘Litigation’ columns (as they then were) in the NLJ in 1995. I also see an announcement that I had been appointed to the district bench during that year and so that also must be true.
Unhappily, my columns became scarce for a while. This
