It can be a tough old gig, being a High Court judge. True, the money is decent – £192,679 a year for the latest intake – but the job is often, well, arduous.

Mr Justice Henshaw received some well-deserved sympathy this week from the Court of Appeal, which praised his ‘conspicuously careful’ 497-paragraph, 156-page judgment in a high-stakes jurisdiction dispute. His ruling was ‘described fairly during the course of the appeal as a labour of Hercules’, Lady Justice Carr said.

Obiter could not help but think of poor Mr Justice Hildyard, whose long-awaited ruling on a $5bn civil fraud claim was expected ‘imminently’ as this edition of the Gazette went to pixel.

The High Court heard last week that his ruling is expected to be ‘well in excess of 1,500 pages’, which on Obiter’s back-of-an-envelope calculations could put Hildyard’s opus at longer than even War and Peace – comfortably putting Hercules J in the shade.

Hildyard retires from the bench in October. One hopes he will take a holiday, though he can be excused for not packing a book.

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