{"id":432,"date":"2007-07-18T06:22:14","date_gmt":"2007-07-18T06:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=432"},"modified":"2007-07-18T06:22:46","modified_gmt":"2007-07-18T06:22:46","slug":"high-court-judge-referred-to-the-office-for-judicial-complaints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=432","title":{"rendered":"High Court Judge referred to the Office for Judicial Complaints"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the first time the Lord Chief Justice has taken steps to initiate disciplinary action against a High Court judge by referring the judge to the Office for Judicial Complaints (OJC), which was set up last year under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.<\/p>\n

It is a first step towards possible disciplinary proceedings against the judge. It could lead to a reprimand or even to a recommendation to ask Parliament to remove him. A High Court Judge can only be removed from office by parliament.<\/p>\n

Mr Justice Peter Smith (the judge who presided over the “Da Vinci Code” case) was slammed by the Court of Appeal for marring his judgment with his personal feelings.<\/p>\n

[In the “Da Vinci Code” case the judge wrote a coded message, thought to have been unprecedented in court judgments].<\/p>\n

The case that has provoked the referral to the OJC came after Peter Smith J had been in negotiations to join a law firm called Addleshaws. The negotiations broke down.<\/p>\n

Smith said that he had been angered by his treatment which had wasted his time. The Court of Appeal found that Smith had \u00e2\u20ac\u0153animosity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d towards the firm.<\/p>\n

Then a case was due to be heard before Peter Smith J involving a party who was head of a department at Addleshaws. An application to the judge for him to stand down (be recused) was denied by him.<\/p>\n

The Court of Appeal ruled that instead of testing the evidence of the witness the judge cross examined him in a way that a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153defence advocate\u00e2\u20ac\u009d would.<\/p>\n

The Court of Appeal ruled that Peter Smith J\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actions were \u00e2\u20ac\u0153wholly inappropriate\u00e2\u20ac\u009d especially in relation to the cross-examination and that the court was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153quite satisfied that the judge should have recused himself\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n

The court also held that Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attitude towards Addleshaws, about which the firm was complaining, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153rose directly from the judge\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s private affairs\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n

The conduct of the hearing, it ruled, underlined the fact that he had been \u00e2\u20ac\u0153personally involved\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the first time the Lord Chief Justice has taken steps to initiate disciplinary action against a High Court judge by referring the judge to the Office for Judicial Complaints (OJC), which was set up last year under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. It is a first step towards possible disciplinary proceedings against the judge. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}