Dominic Regan casts a wry eye over some unusual cases..
When I was a little boy my mother took me to a talk given by a wise old man, Professor Ian Smith. Two things have always stayed with me. I had never heard profanities before and he said that in English law truth was stranger than anything one could ever invent. He was right as usual.
Over the years I have come across so many odd cases. Here are some of them. None are apocryphal. All are reported.
Our judiciary is the envy of the world. Read Garratt v Saxby (2004) 1 WLR 2152, [2004] All ER (D) 302 (Feb) and you will see why. The trial judge was inadvertently made aware of a payment into court at the start of the trial. This detail should only be revealed when all issues had been concluded. His ingenious solution? He ordered himself to forget it! I have a vision of the defendants saying you can’t do that and the judge asking “forget what?” Anyway, it went to the Court of Appeal which praised this pragmatic
