You know you've won if...

Apr 17, 2008, 06:01 AM

Authors : Mike

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Post date : Apr 17, 2008, 06:01 AM

...you read in the first paragraph of your House of Lords judgment that you are 'a famously poor women's college'.
Newnham College had obviously got Lord Hoffmann's sympathy; fortunately, they also got his vote and that of two other law lords to win their VAT case on a 3-2 majority.
It reminds me of my favourite (all right, my only) Lord Denning story, where counsel apocryphally began his argument before that judicial crusader for the downtrodden* as follows:
'My Lord, my client is a penniless, eighty-year-old, washerwoman.'
Pause.
'However, there are OTHER reasons for this appeal.'

*(Provided, of course, you were not a member of one of those pernicious and dastardly conspiracies against good order known as a trade union. Like most law students, my opinion of Lord Denning changed considerably when I moved on from tort to employment law.)

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