A good kicking

BabyB LPlate improved Today I was instructed on behalf of an insurance company. My instructions were the following:

“The other side’s solicitor has caused your instructing solicitor no end of grief in the past few months. We were minded to settle the case on a 50/50 basis but given their approach, Counsel is instructed to go along to court and give the other side a good kicking. With bells on.”

I lost, but was able to report back that at least I went down in flames.

October 12, 2016 · Tim Kevan · One Comment
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Monday morning with Alex Williams’ cartoons

This cartoon is by Alex Williams who draws the Queen’s Counsel cartoons for The Times and in numerous books including The Queen’s Counsel Lawyer’s Omnibus. He offers almost all of his cartoons for sale at £120 for originals and £40 for copies and they can be obtained from this email info@qccartoon.com.

October 10, 2016 · Tim Kevan · Comments Closed
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Bare garden

OldFatherTime This morning I visited the so-called ‘bear garden’ in the high courts for the first time with a case of my own. Whenever I’ve seen the place before it’s like a vision of hell with lawyers piled high all arguing aloud like some kind of terrible legal trading floor. Today though, it was completely and utterly silent. Not a lawyer in sight. Not even an opponent. Now admittedly all I was doing was handing in agreed directions, (hard days work if ever there was one) and so I guess not having an opponent was not actually a complete surprise. But what has happened to the bear garden? Is litigation coming to an end? All cases settling? For the sake of the profession, that would be a most terrible thing.

But just when I was even starting to wonder if I’d somehow got the wrong day or something, who should pass through but OldFatherTime himself. The old ex-law lord who still strolls around the Temple and also it now seems the high court. We have now met on quite a few occasions and this time he recognised me. “Ah, hello, young man. It’s rather quiet around here don’t you think?”
“I was wondering about that myself. Do you think perhaps people have decided to stop litigating or something?”
“Don’t worry about that young man. So long as people remain greedy, vain and proud they will continue to waste their hard-earned money in fights so complicated and expensive that only the ingenious imagination of a lawyer could ever have invented.”

Then he looked at me with a smile before adding: “But remember young man, for every thousand meaningless cases that you churn out just for the money, there’ll be one in which you might actually make a difference.”

I’m not sure quite how to take those kind of statistics but as he went on his way, he turned around and added: “Believe me, when you get that case you’ll know. Oh, please do pass on my very best to OldRuin.”

October 5, 2016 · Tim Kevan · One Comment
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Monday morning with Alex Williams’ cartoons

October 3, 2016 · Tim Kevan · Comments Closed
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Monday morning with Alex Williams’ cartoons

September 26, 2016 · Tim Kevan · Comments Closed
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Glasses

BusyBody was in chambers today. “Hi BabyB. I’m back in court next week. How do you like my new deadly weapon?”
“Sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”
“My new glasses, silly.”
“Oh. But I didn’t know you ever needed glasses before,” I answered, looking at the thick rimmed pair that now adorned her face.
“I still don’t.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t you get it? They’re great. They’re just filled with plain old glass.”
“But why?”
“Well not only do they make me look more intelligent, kind of Lois Lane style but they’re also going to work a treat when I cross-examine and spin them around and about.” She took them off and me a lingering and slightly made stare as she rabidly spun the glasses around in her left hand.

I think I must have looked just a tiny bit sceptical. “You see BabyB. According to my advocacy and all round general life coach, he says that not only will the action of taking off the glasses intimidate the witness but when you spin them around it’ll completely distract them and allow me to trip them up.”

Suddenly I had a vision of armies of BusyBodies entering the courts all over the land wearing the same silly glasses and then brandishing them at anyone who got in their way like some sort of weird sword.

September 21, 2016 · Tim Kevan · 3 Comments
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TheHampster

BabyBarista My opponent today was truly worse than I am in court and I have to admit that that’s saying something for most of my court appearances except those rare occasions when I somehow manage to luck out with a Busker impression or a judge getting the wrong end of the stick. But today, my opponent wasn’t bad due to inexperience. That in itself I would hope is forgiveable. No, my opponent has been practising for over twenty years and was very clearly the worse for it.

I’m going to call her TheHamster since the only way to describe her style in court is like the very worst ham actor in the very worst amateur dramatic pantomime in the very worst town in the worst area of England. It was like she’d watched endless re-runs of Perry Mason and AllyMcBeal and decided that that was how a lawyers should perform in court. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of both of those shows. But unless you are aged eighty and perhaps a former attorney general addressing the House of Lords in the case of the decade, you do not go about addressing the court with the sorts of airs and graces you might see in those old programmes. But even that would be to understate her performance I’m afraid.

Unfortunately, it also meant that the case lasted about ten times longer than it should have done. Which was clear from the moment my opponent started going through every page of the pleadings and evidence even as she introduced the case. To cap it all, the judge was a deputy district judge and was clearly pretty new to the job and so didn’t have the guts to interrupt my opponent. Then when it came to cross-examining my client, she got up from her seat, left the court room to the astonishment of us all and then came bursting back in and confronted him with: “Now. When I left the room, with which hand did I open the door?”
To which he answered: “No idea.”
“Aha.” She replied. “Which obviously shows that your visual memory is unreliable, wouldn’t you agree?”

At which we all heard the judge utter under his breath “what rubbish”.

Then when it came to submissions on what was nothing more than a tiny car case, my opponent finished with: “Sir, if you find for the other side, you may as well rip up the Highway Code” at which point she took her copy of the Code and ripped it in half.

As if this was somehow going to help her case. Which was only made worse when the judge turned to TheHamster and said: “That was my copy you just destroyed.”

Ouch.

Oh, it will perhaps come as no surprise that she lost.

September 14, 2016 · Tim Kevan · 2 Comments
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Just a small point

ClicheClanger Today ClichéClanger my solicitor rang me “just to check a small point” about one of his cases. I always worry when a solicitor says that because it generally means two things. First, it is probably not a small point or they wouldn’t be ringing counsel in the first place. As OldSmoothie’s inverse rule as to sets of papers says: the smaller they come the longer they’ll take.

Second, by “small point” they actually mean, “please will you do this work for free”. I often wonder what my local supermarket would say if I went in and I said: “Hi there. I use you quite a lot despite all the competition around so do you think you could give me this week’s groceries for free please?”

September 7, 2016 · Tim Kevan · 3 Comments
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Monday morning with Alex Williams’ cartoons

September 5, 2016 · Tim Kevan · Comments Closed
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Legend

OldRuin was in chambers today and looking particularly sprightly which was a pleasure to see after all of his health scares last week. “I’ve got a get together with some old chums from the bar this evening. Ever decreasing number they are too, BabyB. Still, OldFatherTime keeps on going regardless.”

I told him that I had bumped into OldFatherTime in the bear garden the other day and that he had passed on his regards to OldRuin.
“They don’t make them like him, any more, BabyB. Legend has it that as a young man he was a friend of Lord Atkin and helped him draft the judgment in Donoghue v Stevenson after church and a particularly hearty Sunday lunch out in the shires. That’d make him older than would be imaginiable though. Definitely a great reformer BabyB. In my time you could always tell which of the judgments of Lord Denning had been preceded by a visit of OldFatherTime to his home in Whitchurch, you know.”

He looked at me wistfully and then whispered as if he were passing on a secret: “You know, some say BabyB, that OldFatherTime has been around as long as the common law itself. Like some sort of legal Highlander. Silly really but his early years are so shrouded in colonial mystery that it’s left it open to speculation.” With a twinkle in his eye he smiled in a way that the French would describe as mi fig, mi raisin. Only half-joking.

August 31, 2016 · Tim Kevan · 12 Comments
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