LAUGHTER IN COURT

Southland Times, Issue 18945, 19 May 1923, Page 2

LAUGHTER IN COURT

MR JUSTICE DARLING. MANY YEARS OF HUMOUR, What is missed in reading the jokes of Mr Justice Darling (who set his Court tittering again the other day) is the significance of their context, says an English writer. On circuit in Kent a witness remarked that he went to the “Elephant” Inn to telephone. “A trunk call, I suppose?” said the Judge. No one would term that a first-class joke, seeing it in print; too-ready critics think him either flippant or foolish, because they make no allowance for the psj/chology of the moment.

Our senior Judge is 73; he has been cn the Bench nearly 26 years. He is proven a man of encyclopaedic knowledge, a profound scholar, a poet, an accomplished linguist, and a philosopher with wide sympathies and a passionate love of truth. The secret of his joking is perhaps revealed in this statement of a counsel:

“Those who have seen him over many years conducting cases know that he makes brilliant use of his wit to concentrate attention on vital points and to put irrelevancies to confusion.”

Plenty of Darling jokes read in the light of this explanation attain fresh strength in print.

Counsel in an engineering case: This valve was worked by a spring, but your Lordship knows a spring will not last long. Mr Justice Darling: Yes, for I have read Ver non semper viret (spring-time is short). Mr Justice Darling (in another case) : Do you mean that you can get a license not knowing how to drive, and then career all round the streets as you like?

Chaffeur: Yes. Mr Justice Darling : I only want to know, because I sometimes walk in the streets.— (Laughter.) Counsel (cross-examining plaintiff in a libel case) : Were your services appreciated by the King during the war? Mr Justice Darling: Some said that General Wolfe was mad, and the King said he hoped he would bite some of the other generals.

But humour comes to his aid in all situ atione—even in a “scene” in Court:

While a woman plaintiff was giving evidence the woman defendant exclaimed, “You wicked liar!” Mr Justice Darling: Mrs W., if you don’t keep quiet I will have you removed from the Court.

Mrs W.: It’s more than I can bear hearing her say that. Mr Justice Darling: You try to bear it, will you? I have a great deal more than that to bear.

Mrs W.: Do let me speak, sir. I must tell you the truth. Mr Justice Darling: In this Court we can’t allow more than one person at a time to tell the truth.

When complaint was made in 1918 as to the acoustic properties of the Judges’ Court at the Old Bailey, Mr Justice Darling observed: One hears rather well on the Bench, but I have heard that counsel experience great difficulty in hearing. I have been told that in a case in which a Judge pronounced a sentence of seven years’ penal servitude the prisoner was paralysed by hearing a voice from the roof giving him another seven years. During a trial at Bristol Assizes (1921) it was stated by a solicitor that unsuccessful efforts had been made to find a man named Little. Mr Justice Darling: It still remains true that we “want but little here below.” “Is there such a thing as free will?” he asked on one occasion. “The House of Lords were discussing the ether day whether there was such a thing, or whether everything was not pre-destined. I think they reserved judgment.”