The F-word in court

This is from Scots Law News, Edinburgh University and written by Hector L MacQueen and Scott Wortley



Lord Woolman may have set a new record for the number of times the F-word has appeared in a civil case judgment in his opinion in McCormack v Hamilton Academical Football Club [2010] CSOH 124, issued on 1 September 2010.

Mr McCormack had been sacked for gross misconduct as assistant manager of the football club after a mere two months in post. His claim was for wrongful dismissal. One of the major aspects of the alleged misconduct was Mr McCormack's swearing and in particular his regular use of the F-word in public and in the relative privacy of the dressing-room. Narrating the evidence, Lord Woolman finds himself forced to use the word also, no less than six times. There were also a number of other incidents in which Mr McCormack's speech and conduct showed himself not inclined to tone it down a bit when in the presence of a member of the opposite gender (the club physiotherapist was female).

Nonetheless Lord Woolman comes to the conclusion that Mr McCormack was indeed wrongfully dismissed and puts the case out By Order for assessment of the damages to be awarded. There is however no elaboration on the meaning and significance of the F-word and its derivatives such as we find in the English passing off and cybersquatting case French Connection Ltd v Sutton [2000] ETMR 341 (the case also responsible for your correspondent's only use of the F-word in print: see Contemporary Intellectual Property: Law and Policy chapter 17).

A certain high court judge is facing action after naming his pigs (the ones that go oink) after the children and wife of another high court judge.............can`t name him but think Rossi v Rossi

I remember a barrister telling me of a judge who would often have a crafty fag before a hearing (FH) he would hide it in the draw if the usher presented the litigants unexpectedly, the barristers and solicitors would ignore the smoke rising from his desk knowing his grumpy nature leaving the poor peeps in court wondering what on earth was going on

I liked the Scots Law posts written a couple of years back by Hector MacQueen I believe, about the Selkirk Cockerel saga. This related to a night time curfew handed down to a cockerel, Charlie. Charlie's owner admitted a breach of an order regulating Charlie's crowing early in the morning.

The court was told the cockerel wasn't making so much noise as in his younger years prompting the local rag to report that Charlie was unlikely to see the winter out and his owner saying Charlie was in too much of a "bedraggled state" to be stuffed so he would be given a dignified burial.

For those separated or divorced (or anyone else for that matter) having difficulty sleeping at night there is then a link to the online Silence Your Rooster Insomnia Game.

www.law.ed.ac.uk/sln/blogentry.aspx?blogentryref=7589

U 2 need to come accross the border a bit more

Just one more,

A judge was presiding over a final Ancillary Relief hearing, a three day hearing the judge was shall we say quite old and kept falling asleep to the horror of the litigants.

The barrister trying to close chose the loud cough approach to wake the judge which worked a treat, he woke with a start had a rant at the guy about taking a car without consent and ended saying the guy would receive a custodial sentence for continued theft of motor vehicles, the poor bloke by this point was in a state of panic, his barrister was busily trying to get the judges attention...............he didn't go to prison just lost most of the assets

Marshy_ wrote:

U 2 need to come accross the border a bit more

Funny you should say that, sometime ago a woman claimed that she was the judge's "porn" which led me to believe that courts in England & Wales were far more interesting than up here.