JUDGE REBUKED.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 457, 19 May 1932, Page 3

JUDGE REBUKED.

Lord Justice Reverses Bachelor’s Decision. LONDON, May 12. “ If there is to be a discussion of the relations of husbands and wives, it would come better from judges who have more than a theoretical knowledge of husbands and wives.” So said Mr Justice Scrutton, a Lord Justice of Appeal and a married man with three sons and one daughter, reversing a judgment of the famous bachelor judge, Mr Justice M’Cardie. “Mr Justice M’Cardie,” he said, ‘'had referred to judges who possess sociological knowledge, but I think that the less sociological knowledge is brought to bear on legal questions the better. I am a little surprised that an unmarried gentleman should, as Mr Justice M’Cardie has done in another case, explain what is the proper underclothing that ladies should wear. I think that these things are better disregarded in legal discussions.” The judge added that, although means of enforcing a husband's and a wife’s respective rights of consortium had materially altered—the husband being unable to employ physical force —there still remained means of enforcing those rights, notably by the restitution of conjugal rights. Mr Justice M’Cardie was wrong in thinking that there was no evidence on which a jury properly directed could give a verdict for plaintiff. The case ought to have been retried before a second jury. Lords Justices Green and Slesser concurred. This was the case in which John I Place, a Cambridge grocer's assistant, sued Dr Charles Searle for damages, alleging that the doctor had enticed his wife away from him. Mr Justice M’Cardie found for defendant, and the result of this appeal enables Place to have a fresh trial.