Unlawful Occasions by Henry Cecil

Author:Henry Cecil
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: House of Stratus

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Mr Baker’s Case Retried

The judge was Mr Justice Reddish and he sat with a jury. After the jury had been sworn, Panter opened the case for Mr Baker.

‘Members of the jury,’ he began, ‘once a week for a majority of the weeks in the year a large number of people in this country including, I expect, some of you, have a genuine hope that the whole of their lives may be changed. That, instead of sharing the kitchen and bathroom with their next door neighbours or their mothers-in-law, they will have a house of their own. That, instead of wondering whether they can find the next instalment due on the car, they will own a car outright. That husbands will be able to give fur coats to their wives. That wives will be able quite easily to get all the clothes which the children need. That they won’t have to scrape and save for a week’s holiday in a third rate boarding house but will be able to take a trip round the world. For most people there is no other hope of this kind available. They have no elderly relations likely to die and leave them a lot of money. They have no large endowment policies about to mature. The only hope they have is that they may have sent in a winning line in a football pool. No one pretends that this is more than a slender hope, but it is a real one. Nearly every week one person at least receives a big prize. P’raps it’ll be me next time, they say. The fact that they are much more likely, as far as statistics are concerned, to be run over in the street doesn’t lessen the hope.’

The judge, who had started to grow impatient after the first few sentences, could restrain himself no longer.

‘What on earth has all this got to do with the case, Mr Panter?’

‘If your Lordship will allow me to continue my address to the jury, your Lordship will be enlightened on the matter,’ said Panter, quite unruffled.

‘I’ve read the pleadings,’ said the judge, ‘and all this flummery appears to me to be wholly irrelevant.’

‘The jury,’ said Mr Panter, ‘have not had your Lordship’s advantage of reading the pleadings.’

‘Then why don’t you tell the jury what is in the pleadings, instead of pouring out this frothy nonsense?’

‘I’m sorry, my Lord,’ said Panter, ‘but, subject to any directions by your Lordship, I propose to open the case to the jury in my own way and to come to the pleadings when it seems convenient. There are, as far as I know, no particular rules as to how counsel should or should not open a case.’

‘There is certainly one rule – that what he says should be relevant,’ said the judge. ‘If the plaintiff is entitled to share in the defendant’s prize, it doesn’t matter in the least what are the hopes or thoughts of other people who go in for these competitions. If you

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