fredfertang
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Certainly better reading than his "new model constructive trusts" which still on occasions cause me to wake up at night in a cold sweat!Not a book, but a wonderful piece of cricket writing. It's the opening paragraph of a judgment given by Lord Denning in the case of Miller v Jackson. Some of you (well, fredfertang at least) will be familiar with it. For those that aren't, here it is.
"In summertime village cricket is the delight of everyone. Nearly every village has its own cricket field where the young men play and the old men watch. In the village of Lintz in County Durham they have their own ground, where they have played these last 70 years. They tend it well. The wicket area is well rolled and mown. The outfield is kept short. It has a good club house for the players and seats for the onlookers. The village team play there on Saturdays and Sundays. They belong to a league, competing with the neighbouring villages. On other evenings after work they practise while the light lasts. Yet now after these 70 years a judge of the High Court has ordered that they must not play there any more. He has issued an injunction to stop them. He has done it at the instance of a newcomer who is no lover of cricket. This newcomer has built, or has had built for him, a house on the edge of the cricket ground which four years ago was a field where cattle grazed. The animals did not mind the cricket. But now this adjoining field has been turned into a housing estate. The newcomer bought one of the houses on the edge of the cricket ground. No doubt the open space was a selling point. Now he complains that when a batsman hits a six the ball has been known to land in his garden or on or near his house. His wife has got so upset about it that they always go out at week-ends. They do not go into the garden when cricket is being played. They say that this is intolerable. So they asked the judge to stop the cricket being played. And the judge, much against his will, has felt that he must order the cricket to be stopped: with the consequence, I suppose, that the Lintz Cricket Club will disappear. The cricket ground will be turned to some other use. I expect for more houses or a factory. The young men will turn to other things instead of cricket. The whole village will be much the poorer. And all this because of a newcomer who has just bought a house there next to the cricket ground."
Genius.
The TCCB underwrote the costs of the appeal and used the same legal team who so failed in the Packer litigation
Apparently one end of the square was only 30 yards or so from the house - it was a new build so it begs the questions as to how they got planning consent and/or why the Millers didn't see it coming - although it was in the North East so that was John Poulson's time wasn't it?
When the Daily Telegraph spoke to Denning's clerk afterwards he was told that his lordship wasn't a sporting man and that his passions extended to "rice pudding and the law"
And the result? - a true example of the law appearing an ass to a layman - but the injunction was discharged