Rising price of justice

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33060, 30 October 1972, Page 15

Rising price of justice

(By

GARY ARTHUR,

London correspondent of "The Press.")

LONDON, Oct. 29.

The rising price of justice is causing increasing alarm in Britain. Recent well-publi-cised court cases have brought it home to the ordinary wage-earner that he must look closely at his bank balance before contemplating litigation.

A libel damages case being heard this week had gone for 32 days at total cost of SNZI2O,OOO when the Judge, Mr Justice Ackner, urged a settlement to help avoid "inevitable financial disaster” for some of those involved. Those not facing financial disaster were the eight barristers —- four of them Queen’s Counsel — appearing in the case. Legal costs were mounting at the rate of $4OOO a day.

Those who resent the feast that lawyers appear to make on such cases will have been gratified to read on Tuesday that in another case—a criminal case at Nottingham —the Judge ordered the defence solicitor to pay personally the costs of both the prosecution and the defence. The solicitors had asked for a last-minute adjournment, which the Judge said had cost the country $2OO. Miss Nora Beloff, the “Observer’s” political and lobby correspondent, lost a copyright action against the satirical magazine, “Private Eye,” last week, and is now faced with a costs bill of $lO,OOO. She plans to appeal against the judgment, which will involve further expense. This week, she won a libel action arising from the same “Private Eye” article, and the court awarded her damages of SNZ6OOO and costs of BNZ4OOO. Another expensive action

was that involving Sir Gerald Nabarro, the wealthy and flamboyant Conservative M.P. He has just been acquitted on a dangerous driving charge case having gone to a re-trail after his jury decision, Sir Gerald Nabarro estimates that his first trial, his appeal and his re-trial cost him $lO,OOO. Sir Gerald Nabarro said after the case that it showed that if a man could afford to pay for justice he would secure it, and that a man who could not afford to pay would rarely secure it “If I had been unable to invest hundreds of pounds I should not have been able to make any progress,” he said. “Thus, an ordinary working man with little additional means, faced with a similar situation, would not have been able to do anything.” This has got him into hot water with the legal profession. Both the British Legal Association and the Law

Society leapt to their members’ defence, repudiating his criticism. They denied that the law was just for the rich. But the president of the Law Society himself, Sir Desmond Heap, had said in his Presidential address only a few days before, that people on middle-level incomes just could not afford to face particular types of legislation. They were too well-off to get free legal aid, but not rich enough to risk losing a case and having to pay their own costs.

Sir Desmond Heap called their predictament “an affront to the fundamental principle of equality under the law.”

A Labour member of Parliament, Mr Arthur Lewis, is citing Sir Gerald Nabarro’s remarks about his own case in support of his Commons motion that justice must be seen to be done for the poor as well as for the wealthy.