Judges who took their time

For the fourth time this year, a judge has been given formal advice for misconduct over a late judgment. This time a 17-month delay in delivering judgment in an admittedly complex case. The tribunal judge had said in mitigation that she had a number of roles within the judicial system to which she had to attend. The other three judicial office-holders had racked up delays of 15-18 months. 

None, however, was in the class of the 19th-century lord chancellor Lord Eldon. In the 1805 case of Radnor v Shafto he said: ‘Having had doubts upon this will for 20 years, there can be no use in taking more time to consider it.’ Not that he was criticised. One judge thought: ‘Very long experience in the Court of Chancery has taught me the value of the lord chancellor’s doubts on all occasions.’

In 1816 he heard the case of Collis v Nott but had not delivered a judgment by 1823. By then he had forgotten the evidence, which had to be reheard.

Collis v Nott was rather capped when a solicitor wrote to him about another case,  complaining in 1820: ‘It is now seven years since my clients have been waiting for Your Lordship’s judgment; and upwards of two years and a half ago they had arrived at the top of the paper; at which I humbly entreat they may, until you can decide upon them, remain.’ Later the solicitor included in his bill of costs ‘attending the Lord Chancellor in his private room when His Lordship begged for further indulgence until tomorrow. 13/4d’.

Out of court, Eldon contrived to mislay his badge of office, the Great Seal, of which he was enormously proud. There had been a fire at home and he had buried the seal in a flower bed but was then ‘distracted by the pretty maids’ handing buckets of water to the firemen and he could not remember which flower bed. The next morning he had his family digging until someone found it.

This was at least better than a successor, the louche Lord Brougham. Playing an after-dinner game of blind man’s bluff, he behaved so boisterously that the women players took the seal and hid it in a chest until he begged for it back.

James Morton is a writer and former criminal defence solicitor