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All trial news
Court at 10:30 a.m. Courtroom 35, to fight Penguin's application for an order on costs. Penguin Books are represented by Miss Heather Rogers with Anthony Julius acting as her junior. All very sedate; I mistake Heather for a man without her wig. My eyesight really is going. Adrian, acting for the first time as my counsel, makes a very tough speech, brilliantly delivered, clearly the absolute master of Costs Law. When he uses the word "damnification," Judge Gray -- who looks very avuncular, sitting without wig or gown -- pulls him up puzzled, does not know the word, admits he learns something new every day. (Miss Rogers is thereupon careful to slip the word into her own speech after that). Adrian's expertise is intimidating for the Judge (who however will get to call the shots at the day's end). Davies argues
At very least he asks for an adjournment and Order that Penguin produce affidavit evidence on the point of who paid their bills. The judge is clearly not receptive to either idea; he shortly allows Miss Rogers to state baldly that she is now instructed by Davenport Lyons, Penguin solicitors, that they (Penguin Books Ltd) paid the bills, and he takes that mere assertion as sufficient evidence that there was no maintenance. And he does not address the proportionality issue, at least not in my presence. Gray does say some illuminating things however: he clearly finds the amounts paid to the experts (the bill for Prof. Hajo Funke's work alone has now risen to £140,000!!) and their previously anonymous helpers obscene, but he does not strike them out there and then, because Miss Rogers persuades him he cannot do it just like that. He also spots that the work of Prof. Richard Evans et al. was originally billed to Mishcon de Reya, Lipstadt's solicitors, so what are those disbursements doing in the Davenport billing folder presented to me? Coffee at a Pret à Porter with Adrian and my instructing solicitor Sarah Rees of Goldsmiths. I leave at the lunch adjournment, as at 2 p.m. I have a group of eight US law students from Montana visiting with their professor, to discuss the Lipstadt case and great trials in history (Nuremberg etc.) at Duke Street. They make a jolly bunch and I address them from 2 to 3 p.m. interrupted by a crazy Oriental woman calling from Canada to order a book; after ten minutes of failure to comprehend, I give up. Having once again had only three and a half hours' sleep, I hit the sofa. Almost at once Sky TV phones at 3:10 p.m. with the verdict: the Judge has ordered me to pay £150,000 in six weeks. Now that is a real prospect. [...] A journalist from The Guardian phones, and asks about my rumoured £300,000 fighting fund. Eventually, when he asks who is behind the Goldsmith's episode, who "they" are, I say: "I don't really want to continue this conversation," and hang up. The Times diarist Mr Owen phones to invite me to lunch next week; gerne. Fabulous, how the media are coming back on line now that the Great Trial is over! Adrian phones from the courthouse, very bullish about how well he has done in court today; and yes, so he has, so he has. Sky TV come round at 5 p.m. to film, then a BBC crew with a jolly black-suited woman standing in for Jon Silverman at 6:10 p.m. I put on a shameless act for them.
One wonders how high up the British judicial system such
"ideological grounds" are allowed to permeate.
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LATER I send this email response to a query from
school student Tina S.: "Yes, I now have lawyers and
fine counsel fighting with me. The appeal has to be fought
strictly on points of law. As you will have seen perhaps
from today's The Times diary,
yesterday my attorneys [Goldsmith's] withdrew, --
we
had a hearing before Judge Gray today! -- pleading that one
of their junior partners (evidently their Mr L[...])
had objected on 'ideological grounds'. "
write
to David Irving