Maurice Drake

Sir Frederick Maurice Drake QC DFC (* 15. February 1923 ; † 6. April 2014 ) was a British lawyer , the first lawyer was and later between 1991 and 1995 as chairman of the judges for England and Wales competent High Court of Justice presided over led some of the most high-profile libel lawsuits of the time.

Life

Second World War, studies and lawyer

Drake completed his schooling at the St George's School in Harpenden and did during the Second World War, his military service in the Royal Air Force in No. 96 Squadron and No. 255 Squadron. Due to his short-sightedness , however, it was not possible for him to complete training as a pilot , so he was used as a navigator in fighter aircraft of the type Bristol Beaufighter . On July 16, 1943, he was promoted to flight sergeant .

After a series of successful missions against enemy aircraft, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) as a Lieutenant (Pilot Officer) on April 7, 1944 .

After the war, Drake began a study of 1,945 law at Exeter College of the University of Oxford and received after graduation in 1950 his legal admission to the Bar ( Inns of Court ) from Lincoln's Inn . He then took up an activity as a lawyer in the area of ​​the Inner Temple Bar Association , where he worked in a law firm for proceedings from common law , but also with criminal law, tort law , contract law and defamation law. In addition, he also dealt with lucrative procedures from licensing law , so that he was often the legal representative of the gambling and sports betting company Ladbrokes and similar companies. For his services he was appointed on April 23, 1968 Attorney General (Queen's Counsel) appointed.

Among his clients, the social activist was one of Mary Whitehouse , the claims for damages against Ned Sherrin because of a joke in the BBC - satire show So Much a Program, More a Way of Life emergency . He also represented the singer Les McKeown of the Bay City Rollers , who was sentenced to three months in prison after he had attacked the photographer at a pop concert, and the British fascist Oswald Mosley .

Drake was in 1973 as plaintiff's counsel also on all three so-called terrorist Pickets procedure before the Crown Court of Shrewsbury involved. The defendants in these trials were the leaders of 300 picket lines that occupied a building plot in Shropshire in 1972 . According to Drake, they "acted like a hoard of Apache Indians" while shouting, "Kill, kill, kill capitalist bastards." This is not a strike, this is a revolution ”('Kill, kill, kill, capitalist bastards. This is not a strike, it is a revolution').

The guilty verdicts allayed fears that existing laws weren't strict enough to counter terrorist tactics during strikes . They were followed by a government pressure on Chief of Police ( Chief Constable ) to abandon their restraint in the crackdown on strike for fear of political consequences.

Judge and presiding judge in the High Court of Justice

In 1966 Drake switched to judicial service and was first deputy chairman of the Court of Quarter Sessions of Bedfordshire until 1971 and then from 1972 to 1978 rapporteur (recorder) at the Crown Court. On April 23, 1968, he was appointed Crown Attorney for his services ( Queen's Counsel) .

In addition, he served from 1975 to 1978 as vice chairman of the judicial district for the Midlands and Oxfordshire (Midland and Oxford Circuit) .

On March 3, 1978, Drake was appointed judge of the High Court of Justice responsible for England and Wales, where he worked at the Chamber of Civil Matters (Queen's Bench Division) . On June 2, 1978 he was beaten to the Knight Bachelor and from then on carried the suffix "Sir". He also served as presiding judge of the Midland and Oxford Circuit between 1979 and 1983.

The 1978 trial for the murder of thirteen-year-old newsboy Carl Bridgewater was one of Drake's first trials in this chamber. In the trial, he had to deal with the difficulty that one of the defendants had confessed and incriminated his three co-defendants, and refused to give evidence in the trial. The case later rose to prominence when the defendants' guilty verdict was overturned in 1997 on suspicions that the police had fabricated evidence to back up the important confession. However, during the long campaign to overturn the convictions, no criticism of Drake's trial was raised in the original trial. After the Bridgewater Trial, Drake's reputation grew as one of the most experienced trial judges in the Queen's Bench Division.

In addition to his judicial work, he was also vice-chairman of the Parole Board between 1985 and 1986 and at the same time from 1985 to 1995 an appeal judge at the Pensions Appeal Tribunal . Drake, who was a member of the Liberal Party, was Mayor of St Albans for one term .

After Michael Davies' resignation in 1991, he became a presiding judge of the High Court of Justice and, as such, presided over some of the most high-profile libel suits of the time until 1995.

Jason Donovan defamation lawsuit 1992

One of the earliest defamation trials under Drake's chairmanship involved actor Jason Donovan , who was awarded £ 200,000 in damages in 1992 after an article in Face magazine alleged that he was homosexual and lied about his sexuality. Drake suggested to the jury that calling someone gay in the 1990s was unlikely to be defamatory and that the matter was highly controversial. But the additional insult that Donovan was a hypocrite and hypocrite led to the judge's decision in favor of the plaintiff.

The gathered outside the court female fans cried after the actor after leaving the courtroom explained that he bisexual was, "There is justice! There is justice! ”('There is justice! There is justice!').

Gillian Taylforth defamation lawsuit 1994

His most dramatic case was probably the 1994 Gillian Taylforth defamation lawsuit, which arose from an article in the tabloid The Sun describing how the actress and her fiancé in her Range Rover on a back road off the A1 road carried out a “shameless act” ('indecent act ') would have committed. Much of the evidence in the trial was so sonorous that some commentators asked if it might not undermine trust and confidence in the legal system. The correctness of the procedure was confirmed by the direct manner of Barrister George Carman in sayings such as “I assume, if we go back to the origin, that you gave him a blow job because you both had a happy day” ('I suggest, if we go back to basics, that you were giving him a blow job because you had both had a merry day '), whereby Drake seemed to have determined that the jury should get the bigger picture.

Among the evidence the visual inspection he zubilligte the jury, was a six-year-old video that the actress from the television series EastEnders shows how she plays at a party with a sausage and was used by Carmander to refute the statement of actress that she wasn't an exhibitionist . Far less common was Drake allowing those involved in the trial to enter the High Court of Justice parking lot, where Gillian Taylforth wanted to reenact what she herself described as an innocent comforting gesture to her sick fiancé. Afterwards, two reporters from The Sun , barely able to suppress their giggles, simulated in another vehicle the version of events that was ultimately believed by the jury.

Other significant proceedings

Other known cases Drake had to decide on involved Teresa Gorman , a Conservative Party politician who represented Billericay constituency in the House of Commons between 1987 and 2001 . She was awarded £ 150,000 after a voter slandered her in a pamphlet shortly before an election date. However, the amount was reduced to £ 60,000 on appeal .

Other lawsuits included Claire Latimer, a catering entrepreneur who supplied 10 Downing Street and who was alleged by the satirical magazine Scallywag to have a love affair with Prime Minister John Major , Mona Bauwens, friend of Conservative Minister David Mellor , over a lawsuit against The People newspaper , and entrepreneur Richard Branson , to whom British Airways had to apologize for a dirt campaign.

Drake also presided over a case between the wife of the architect Norman Foster and London Heathrow customs officials on charges of unjustified arrest and defamatory behavior in public. The jury did not come to a guilty verdict, while the defense attorney described the plaintiff as "insufferably grand".

Drake also participated in known criminal trials where necessary and sentenced a 15-year-old arsonist to six life imprisonment after he admitted to having started a fire in a department store in which two pensioners died and 82 other department store customers were injured. The following year, he sentenced a shoplifter to five years' imprisonment for manslaughter of his persecutor, and hoped, given the public debate and the existing guidelines of the Court of Appeal , that the sentence would lead to higher sentences for manslaughter.

In another proceeding, he dismissed the action for damages brought by Chelsea FC soccer player Paul Elliott against Welsh national soccer player Dean Saunders for a foul that led to Elliott's retirement. However, he fundamentally ruled that players in contact sports had not consented to risk of serious injury, but had every right to seek redress in the courts.

Freemasons

After retiring in 1995, he publicly announced that he had been a Freemason since 1948 , explaining that he saw it as more an opportunity for harmless acting, good dinners, and friendships than for secret deals and career advancement. However, any kind of conspiracy was rejected by him:

“An outsider may say that these are a lot of grown men who act like children. I can understand that, but then again, it's a lot of fun. If I tried to judge someone and they gave me a sign or whatever, I would hold myself back from raising the sentence. "

'An outsider might say it is a lot of grown men behaving like children. I can understand that, but it is fun all the same. If I were trying to sentence somebody and they tried to signal me or whatever, I would have to restrain myself from increasing the sentence. '

Web links

• Sir Maurice Drake - obituary. Sir Maurice Drake was a High Court judge who presided over some of the most high-profile libel actions of his time . In: The Daily Telegraph, April 9, 2014

Individual evidence

1. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 36410, HMSO, London, March 3, 1944, p. 1107 ( PDF , accessed May 28, 2014, English).
2. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 36459, HMSO, London, April 7, 1944, p. 1616 ( PDF , accessed May 28, 2014, English).
3. ↑ London Gazette . No. 44571, HMSO, London, April 23, 1968, p. 4645 ( PDF , accessed May 28, 2014, English).
4. ↑ London Gazette . No. 44154, HMSO, London, October 27, 1966, p. 11567 ( PDF , accessed May 28, 2014, English).
5. ↑ London Gazette . No. 44571, HMSO, London, April 23, 1968, p. 4645 ( PDF , accessed May 28, 2014, English).
6. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 47481, HMSO, London, March 7, 1978, p. 2910 ( PDF , accessed May 28, 2014, English).
7. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 47548, HMSO, London, June 2, 1978, p. 6713 ( PDF , accessed May 28, 2014, English).