BENCH’S ADVICE ON LITIGATION

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 9 March 1935, Page 11

BENCH’S ADVICE ON LITIGATION

Novelists’ Portrayal of Judge Sheer Nonsense

QNE great and needless mischief is that those who are frying on the gridiron of litigation, be they parties or witnesses, still come to court under the shadow of the monstrous legends and fables whieh have about as much relation to truth as the nursemaid’s menace in our far-off childhood of the Big Black Bogy,” writes Mr. Justice Acton in the London Evening News. “Bet the timorous take heart; they will meet with a courtesy and co.nsid-! oration which may surprise them—unless, of course, they are really naughty- .

Bench of His Majesty’s Judges for its own behoof and for the better instruction of the public is its own particular Anthony Trollope, to criticise and satirise, if you will—and he would have ample scope—hut to do it with some knowledge of what he is talking about.

“To depict the Judge of to-day either as a decrepit old gentleman lolling indolently back in an armchair and waking up with a start at intervals, or as a harsh and brutal tyrant without insight, knowledge of human nature, or howels of compassion, is a mere travesty of the truth; but it happens to be the fashion, and it prevails.

“As for the Judges of the novelist and the playwright of to-day, they are, almost without exception, not ‘fiction founded upon fact’ (like the ladies’ bustles of fifty years ago, as somebody said), but stark nonsense. What is perhaps most needed by the

“And yet—and yet—probably the best advice, even now, to Those About to Litigate, is—Don’t!”