LAUGHTER IN COURT
The press: Paul Johnson
thinks failed litigants should not be mocked
HOW strong are readers' stomachs? No editor is ever sure of the answer. Several got themselves into trouble recently by printing photographs of the Hillsborough disaster which the public found brutal. The dilemma constantly arises over reporting the details of atrocious court cases, espe- cially those with a strong sexual element. Evidence given can often be stomach- turning. The Times, describing the convic- tion last week of four homosexuals who had killed a 14-year-old-boy during an orgy, added that the inquiry had uncovered 'rings of north London paedophiles'; the police officers involved 'were so affected by what they discovered that debriefings are still being held to help them deal with their experiences'. We were not told what had so upset them. Newspapers are more squeamish than they used to be. The days are no more when newsboys hawked the Police Gazette with the cry 'Latest murder — all the 'orrible details!' A generation ago the News of the World specialised in such lengthy court reports and sold seven million copies. Now it relates gossip about television stars and sells five.
The impact a court action makes on the press today often depends on the judge. This is odd because the media has it in for judges, as we were reminded last week by its savage handling of His Honour Peter Kenworthy-Browne, felt to have got off lightly in a drink-driving case. The practice of angling reports around judicial pronun- ciamentos dates from the 1920s. Until then newspapers were free to report the evi- dence in divorce cases, however salacious. The details in the famous Russell action, however, were so disgusting that Parlia- ment acted, and ever since the press has been allowed to publish only the judicial summing up.
This has placed enormous power in the hands of the judges, of which some have taken unfair advantage. Naturally they have to give their reasons for reaching their verdicts. But the opportunity provided for picking out juicy details from the evidence and adding thunderous obiter dicta has not always been missed. It was a particular grievance of J. B. Priestley that judges abused this procedure to commit character-assassination. He had been cited in a contested action and mercilessly criti- cised by the judge. The way Priestley told it, the summing-up had gone: 'I now come to the correspondent. I am told he is a writer of fiction. And' — wagging his empurpled jowls over his crimson and ermine — 'having heard him in the witness box, I can well believe it.' Today, with 'quickie' divorces nobody cares tuppence about, the danger is less acute but this particular episode rankled with Jolly Jack until his dying day.
Moreover, judges are often free with their comments in other kinds of actions where the evidence is reportable, secure in the knowledge that anything they say is privileged. No one can reasonably object if they feel it incumbent to pay compliments. In the Archer libel case, the judge felt that Mrs Archer, who had obviously gone through hell, deserved to be called 'frag- rant', an ill-chosen word as it happens since it aroused more titters than sympathy. Equally, in the recent criminal case involv- ing the Duchess of Argyll's Moroccan maid, the judge considered it his duty to remove the mud flung at Her Grace by her dishonest employee and to pile on the eulogy.
But judges are liable to go too far when they attempt moralistic character-sum- maries of litigants in civil actions where, after all, no crime has been committed. There was a case last week in which the former mistress of a theatrical agent fought and lost her claim to a share of the value of the business and what the press called their `love nest'. As the case involved 'show business personalities', it was pretty exten- sively reported day-by-day, though news- papers varied in the prominence they gave to the verdict. The Independent, which takes a bleak view of what it thinks serious news and declines to report some royal stories at all, buried it in five paragraphs down-column on page ten. The Daily Mail made it the front-page splash. Mr Justice Millett's 40-minute judgment was good copy. It contained, I must add, some excellent material. Thus: 'In English law a man has a legal obligation to support his wife, even though they may be living apart, but a man has no legal obligation to support his mistress even if they are living together.' That was well and clearly put. No doubt, too, the judge was right to find for the defendant, and he may have consi- dered the mistress — referred to through- out by the media as 'the 39-year-old blonde' — a vexatious litigant. But I do not see that he was entitled to dismiss her as an immature schoolgirl. He summed her up thus: 'Maturity is the last word you would use to describe her. She was immature and never shook off the adolescent desire to be free.' Only a schoolgirl', he said, 'would think that the life of a theatrical agent was a glamorous business.' This was an invita- tion to the nationals to go to town. The Daily Mail's front-page splash shouted joyfully: 'Palimony Case Blonde Sent Packing Without a Penny: THE MIS- TRESS WHO NEVER GREW UP'.
Perhaps, the judiciary should remember that their duty is to sit in judgment on a particular incident not on a person's whole life and character. They may of course be irritated by the fact that an unsuccessful litigant has been enabled to bring the case thanks to the already overstretched legal aid fund. They are not the only ones. Many will have felt for the couple who had to use their life-savings to defend themselves against a tenuous but legally-aided claim from someone they had briefly fostered 20 years before. The struggle faced by Ernest Saunders to get legal aid for his defence against a panoply of prosecutional legal brass sug- gests, there is something seriously wrong with the system, which might have been designed to deny justice to the middle class. In the palimony case the mistress was aided; the theatrical agent now has to find his £20,000 costs. But all that is for Parliament to reform. Judges rightly casti- gate the press for using extravagant lan- guage. They should mind their own too.
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