Raising the Red Curtain

In an impressive show of speed which would have made the late Immediate Past-President Mr Palakrishnan SC proud, barely 3 weeks after his passing on, the Football Association of Singapore organised the R Palakrishnan Memorial Football Match on 15 July 2003. The match, which saw a heartening show of support from members of the Bar, raised funds to set up a Palakrishnan Memorial Scholarship Fund — to be administered by the Law Society of Singapore — towards assisting law undergraduates in the NUS Faculty of Law.

Members who still wish to contribute to the Fund may contact the FAS directly.

Not to be left out, our Law Society Soccer team joined in the fray to take on no less than the National Women’s Team in the curtain-raiser, or as one member put it, the skirt-raiser. Thankfully, our men held their own against the girls to a goal-less draw. All that was missing was Pala cheering in the sidelines!

If You Haven’t Anything Nice to Say, Don’t Say It

It is arguably the greatest line ever delivered in a court judgment. In handing down his ruling in the Supreme Court of Victoria, Cummins J said: ‘It may be offensive, but it is not contempt of court for a person to describe a judge as a wanker.’

The judge was ruling on the reaction of defendant Simon Parsons (who happened to be a solicitor) who when served with an injunction, described the judge granting it as having his hand on a certain unmentionable part of his anatomy.

When the solicitor serving the injunction said: ‘I’ll have to remember to tell him you said that’, Mr Parsons replied: ‘Tell him, because if you don’t I will.’ The solicitor was as good as his word and told the judge, who adjudged Mr Parsons guilty of contempt.

It made its way to the Supreme Court, where Judge Cummins explained how Mr Parsons’ words, ‘albeit particularised’, amounted to calling the original judge a ‘wanker’.

His Honour, with whom the Court of Appeal agreed (see Saltalamacchia v Parsons [2000] VSCA 83) decided: ‘The words spoken by the defendant do not undermine confidence in the administration of justice. They undermine confidence in the person of the solicitor who spoke them.’ Touche.

Judging Politicians

Cherie Booth QC, aka, Mrs Tony Blair, has made news again with a member of public filing a complaint against her with the Bar Council charging her with lobbying female MPs before a crucial vote in the House of Commons on whether to go to war with Iraq.

Ms Ruth Hoult, from Duane, near Dunblane, said the reason she brought the complaint to the Bar was because she ‘took exception’ to Ms Booth’s ‘double standards — acting as a defender of human rights and Amnesty International supporter, and yet promoting the prosecution of a war’.

Ms Booth has replied that she has no case to answer and that the charge was ‘factually incorrect’, but that even if she had canvassed wavering MPs before the critical vote of 18 March such action would not have constituted a breach of the Bar’s rules. Ms Booth argues that the complainant is not one of her clients and cannot rely on a rule that regulates the way barristers discharge professional duties and although a wider rule governing the general behaviour of barristers could cover the allegation that she canvassed MPs, she says: ‘I deny that the alleged conduct can be described as “dishonest” or “discreditable to a barrister” or “prejudicial to the administration of justice”.’

In May, the former lord chancellor Lord Irvine of Lairg dismissed a similar complaint against Ms Booth. His decision to take no action followed a complaint that Ms Booth’s political activities were incompatible with her role as a judge. Lord Irvine ruled that when she was alleged to have canvassed the MPs she would have been acting as the Prime Minister’s wife, and as a supporter and prominent member of the Labour Party, not in her capacity as a judge.