Davey heard him with theatrical impatience and weariness, and replied:
“My lord, I can understand my learned junior not replying to your lordship’s proposition. Your lordship’s proposition has nothing whatever to do with this case. As I was saying when your lordship interrupted me,” &c.
Of course we lost that appeal. The two judges laughed Judge Heywood’s decision out of court, and a few weeks afterwards the Court of Appeal restored Judge Heywood’s decision, with appropriate astonishment at the reasoning of the Divisional Court. Such is the glorious uncertainty of the law.
Mr. Justice Hawkins was often on circuit in the earlier days. In the Crown Court he was painstaking, but in the Civil Court anything like figures or business details he found irksome. In one business case, counsel began discussing the question of the fall of 1-16d. in the price of yarn, when Hawkins indignantly
interrupted him by asking whether the time of her Majesty’s judges was to be spent in dealing with fractions of the smallest coin of the realm. Finding that in the result it came to a goodly sum, he referred the case, and spent the rest of the day elucidating a slander action, which resulted in a verdict for another fraction of a penny.
Mr. Justice Cave very often visited the Northern Circuit. He was a stout, heavy, round-faced man, spoke with a nasal twang, and occasionally slept on the bench, but in spite of his peculiarities he was a straightforward, useful lawyer, and a not unkindly judge. He treated the junior Bar with good-humoured toleration, but I cannot say he suffered them gladly. Louis Aitken, who was the most scrupulous prosecutor on circuit, was one day prosecuting a thief before Cave at Lancaster, and finding that a statement of a policeman on the depositions was made in the absence of the prisoner, and therefore not evidence, properly and carefully omitted it. Cave, who was following the depositions with his thumb and a blue pencil, pulled him up:
“Ow now. Ow now, Mr. Aitken,” he said, in his snarling voice. “This won’t do, you know. You’re garbling the evidence. That’s what you’re doing, garbling the evidence.”
Aitken was too stunned to say anything, and Cave took the policeman through the whole statement. When he had finished, he snapped out: “Any other questions, Mr. Aitken?”
“Only this, my lord,” said Aitken, who had recovered his equanimity. “Was the prisoner present during that conversation?”
“No,” replied the officer.