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04 November 2022 / Dominic Regan
Issue: 8001 / Categories: Features , Profession
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Whoops…as the judge said

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Dominic Regan reveals judicial slips, trips, defiance & high kicks

The law reports are bursting with tales of momentary ineptitude which result in litigation. Nobody is perfect and those who get involved in determining disputes can themselves be guilty of the occasional lapse.

Mishaps in court

One issue that went all the way up to the then House of Lords in Majrowski v Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust [2006] UKHL 34, [2006] 4 All ER 395 was whether an employer could be vicariously liable under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. It was only in the course of oral argument before the highest court in the land that Lord Hope gently pointed out that the answer ‘overlooked by everybody’ (at para [44]) was to be found by reading the Act which was incidentally a model of brevity, running to just 16 sections.

Last year, three members of the Court of Appeal delivered a joint judgment in Global Energy Horizons Corporation v Gray [2021] EWCA Civ 123. At para [8], the

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