13 April 2017

Silence in Court?

Better to keep the phone quiet.

by Chin Chin

The High Court is generally a quiet place, the low murmur of voices setting out the legal arguments, the rustle of silk as a QC takes his place.  Bells and whistles are not encouraged; but, last Thursday, a hearing of the Family Division was interrupted by the ringing of a mobile phone belonging to one of the lawyers.

It may of course have been a welcome distraction from a long and tedious address from Counsel.  Perhaps, though, the judge, Mr Justice Holman, is just well mannered. Anyway, rather than calling for the usher or delivering a swift rebuke from the bench, he simply invited the lawyer concerned to answer it, saying that he never minded mobiles going off in his court and that, after all, “it might be somebody important.”

Judicial respect for counsel’s personal problems is by no means unprecedented. Indeed it was recently exhibited in the Court of Appeal where a nervous young advocate asked that his case should be adjourned and that there should be no sitting the next day.

“Why should we do that?” asked the presiding Lord Justice acerbically.  The young man blushed and stammered.

“Well, my Lord, it’s my wife. She is due to conceive tomorrow.”  The judges looked puzzled and conferred for a second.

“We are not quite sure what you mean,” came the ruling “but we are all agreed that you probably ought to be there.”

The reports do not reveal whether the lawyer took up last Thursday’s invitation.  To answer your phone with the whole of the High Court listening would require a certain amount of chutzpah.  Perhaps it is a call from your wife reminding you to buy some bin liners on the way home.  Well, OK, even Marshall Hall probably had to do chores from time to time. Or the call could be from someone who was not your wife suggesting something entirely different.

Better not get drawn into the details if that is the case.  But what if the number is one you do not recognise.  Then you will have to play it by ear.  It could be the Government who, having rather given up on the Attorney General, have decided to ask you for an import

“Yes, Prime Minister”, you reply loudly and your reputation is made.

Or it could be one of those bizarre fraudsters with a Peter Sellers foreign accent who claim to be from BT and to have detected problems with your computer.  The trouble then is that the reply you normally use will not really do.

“A computer, what is that? I don’t have one.” may be a perfectly good riposte when delivered from the safety of your own home but, if you say it in front of clients, they will wonder if they have got the right person to represent them.  Another normal response is to tell the caller to “F*** Off” but most barristers have an inbuilt reluctance to using language of that type in the courtroom and will go to some lengths to avoid it.

They generally work on the basis that judges are slightly unworldly and easily shocked by profanities – though in fact it would require quite an effort to hear a continuous diet of divorce disputes without occasionally coming across coarse language.  Still, as officers of the Court they try to protect the judge from coarseness, rather as if he was himself an impressionable minor.  Sometimes they even do so when the offending words come up in evidence.

On one famous occasion a witness was asked in cross examination whether a particular discovery had come to him as a surprise.

“I thought, well I’m buggered!”, he replied graphically in a strong Yorkshire accident.

The Judge, who came from the south, couldn’t catch what he said.

“What did your client say?” he asked counsel.

“My Lord, he said that he was taken aback.” came the urbane reply

Of course logically, if you are called on to answer your phone in a public place there is no reason why your replies should have any connection with what is being said at the other end.  Still, you have to be careful.

“What an evening you gave me, darling,” the caller might say in a husky voice. “when will I see you again?”

“That will depend on the state of the market” you might reply, your focus on impressing those present with your city connections.

“Market, who else have you been going out with, call girls?”  This jolts your mind to the caller and for a moment you forget where you are.

“No.  You know that I promised to stop using prostitutes.”  Now you have the court’s full attention.

Guidelines issued by the Lord Chief Justice permit the use of mobile devices in court provided that they are switched to silent.  In a courtroom that may make sense but it will not always do as a solution outside.  Can there be anything more annoying than sitting in the theatre next to someone who is sending texts or emails?  They may not be making any noise but you can see the screen out of the corner of your eye and, particularly if it is rather a dull play, it is impossible not to try to read it.  “Gosh, I wish I was somewhere else.” you might read, and find yourself endorsing the sentiment by wishing they were too.

Obviously resort to social media for entertainment means that the individual concerned has long lost any interest in what is happening on stage but it is better that they should make their protest by walking out than creating a perpetual distraction.  Actually, of course, it is better if they do not go to the theatre at all if they are not interested and I once had a relative, a well-known property developer, who used to take a box at the opera for business reasons even though he was not in the slightest musical.  As the curtain went up he would slip out of his box and go down to the bar, returning seconds before the lights came up at the interval to be seen applauding enthusiastically.  Job done, no one distracted.  He didn’t have to lie about it either.  When asked whether he enjoyed the opera, he used to reply quite truthfully “I enjoy every bar of it”.

Still going back to the courtroom, one advantage of modern technology is that it enables you to be physically present but mentally elsewhere.  Quite a good solution if, like most lawyers, you charge by the hour.

 

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