Eady beaten up
Discussion
Private Eye, well worth the £1.50 a fortnight if only to negate the feeling that the government, press, law and local authorities might occasionally be trustworthy, has been having a field day reporting the libel action between newspaper and 18+ television channel owner Dick Desmond and author Tom Bower. Whilst much of it revolves around lies and more lies by those feted by the high and mighty, of interest to motor sport enthusiasts is that the case was run, after a fashion, by Justice Eady, him of 'I see no nazis' fame.
PE, no admirier of Eady for many of his decisions, gleefully reports what three lord justices of appeal consider to be Eady's abilities as a judge.
One reckoned: "Mr Justice Eady was plain wrong." And, on Eady's decision to keep certain evidence from the jury, "manifestly unjust." Another said "I have no doubt that the judge [Eady] was wrong to exclude the evidence . . . " and "not to allow it would risk the possibility of a miscarriage of justice." Another judge was described as 'visibly angry'. The above comments were said on 20 July, whilst the hearing was still going.
We can be thankful, can we not, that the judges did not feel the same way about the Mosley libel trial. Od course, the NotW didn't go to the appeal court. Still, we can all feel confident that there was no evidence of anything German in Mosley's actions in the Chelsea basement. Eady said so.
What is worse of course is that Eady seems to be rewriting the law as it applies to freedom of speech. This one man. This one man who has been severely criticised by the appeal courte judges.
I suppose the freedom of the judges is an important aspect of this country's protection of rights. But then so is freedom of speech. Hard to get a blanace sometimes.
PE, no admirier of Eady for many of his decisions, gleefully reports what three lord justices of appeal consider to be Eady's abilities as a judge.
One reckoned: "Mr Justice Eady was plain wrong." And, on Eady's decision to keep certain evidence from the jury, "manifestly unjust." Another said "I have no doubt that the judge [Eady] was wrong to exclude the evidence . . . " and "not to allow it would risk the possibility of a miscarriage of justice." Another judge was described as 'visibly angry'. The above comments were said on 20 July, whilst the hearing was still going.
We can be thankful, can we not, that the judges did not feel the same way about the Mosley libel trial. Od course, the NotW didn't go to the appeal court. Still, we can all feel confident that there was no evidence of anything German in Mosley's actions in the Chelsea basement. Eady said so.
What is worse of course is that Eady seems to be rewriting the law as it applies to freedom of speech. This one man. This one man who has been severely criticised by the appeal courte judges.
I suppose the freedom of the judges is an important aspect of this country's protection of rights. But then so is freedom of speech. Hard to get a blanace sometimes.
Eady, bless him, is the judge which sat in judgement over Mosley's spat with the News of the World - the unspeakable in pursuit of the unreadable. It is he who decided that We are Aryans, German military uniforms, death camp re-enactments and such had absolutely nothing to do with naziism. It is eady who, on coming to his conclusion, makes it impossible for us who know Mosley's early history and believe the evidence of our eyes to say what we think went on in the sordid little cellar in Chelsea.
There are other, more far reaching implications of course but those are not for this forum.
It seems odd that we must bow to eady's superior authority on matters of the so very obvious despite his decisions on other matters being, according to the appeal court judges, patently wrong.
There are other, more far reaching implications of course but those are not for this forum.
It seems odd that we must bow to eady's superior authority on matters of the so very obvious despite his decisions on other matters being, according to the appeal court judges, patently wrong.
Reading the transcript at the time, it was extremely difficult (as in, "impossible") to see how Eady had come to his verdict.
Having said that, the respondents did themselves no favours. Even to a layman, it was obvious that they handled themselves badly. From their not challenging Mosley's risible claim that he was unable to confirm the taped evidence that seemed to be obvious to everyone else - that at his previous Chelsea session the boss girl had proclaimed "We are the Aryans - blondes!" - because he was "hard of hearing", to their failing to probe how someone who as a child spent seven years in post-war Germany and France and who had spent his entire life dealing with allegations (right or wrong) that his parents were involved with the Nazis had never had the slightest inkling of the Third Reich connotations that were self-evident to millions of other people, to their reneging on half the fee that they had promised to pay their inside source, with the predictable result that she refused to testify and therefore the NotW had no direct evidence with which to defend themselves, they were shockingly incompetent.
Having said that, the respondents did themselves no favours. Even to a layman, it was obvious that they handled themselves badly. From their not challenging Mosley's risible claim that he was unable to confirm the taped evidence that seemed to be obvious to everyone else - that at his previous Chelsea session the boss girl had proclaimed "We are the Aryans - blondes!" - because he was "hard of hearing", to their failing to probe how someone who as a child spent seven years in post-war Germany and France and who had spent his entire life dealing with allegations (right or wrong) that his parents were involved with the Nazis had never had the slightest inkling of the Third Reich connotations that were self-evident to millions of other people, to their reneging on half the fee that they had promised to pay their inside source, with the predictable result that she refused to testify and therefore the NotW had no direct evidence with which to defend themselves, they were shockingly incompetent.
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