This is wierd but I have actually been reading the law gazettes online these days. (Sighs, I think I'm getting obessesed.) No, I don't read everything. (Of course not lah!) I do, however, particularly enjoy this little section called 'Obiter'. It's a bit like trivia and homour section of any publication, so yeah now you can see why I like it haha.
There was one particularly interesting and amusing issue where they put up funny judgments which I shall quote below haha
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EGG IN YOUR FACE (http://www.lawgazette.com.sg/2003-11/Nov03-obiter.htm)
"More quotable quotes from the Honourable Chief Justice, this time no doubt sending a litigant-in-person scrambling for cover when she appeared before the Court of Appeal (presided over by his Honour) to seek an upward adjustment of an earlier award of $25m to her, as her share of matrimonial assets. In dismissing her appeal, his Honour was reported (see The Straits Times, 25 September 2003) to have quipped 'You probably came here thinking we'd be sympathetic. We are very hard-boiled people. We just sentenced somebody to death this morning.' Ouch."
Famous Denning Openings
(http://www.lawgazette.com.sg/2004-5/May04-obiter.htm)
Much has been said about the art of plain English, but the late Lord Denning was certainly a master of it, as these opening passages of his judgments will show:
'Broadchalke is one of the most pleasing villages in England. Old Herbert Bundy, the defendant, was a farmer there. His home was at Yew Tree Farm. It went back for 300 years. His family had been there for generations. It was his only asset. But he did a very foolish thing. He mortgaged it to the bank.'
- Lloyds Bank v Bundy [1973] 3 All ER 757.
'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 ... [y]et now after these 70 years a judge of the High Court has ordered that they must not play there anymore ... [h]e has done it at the instance of a newcomer who is no lover of cricket.
'This newcomer has built ... 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.'
- Miller v Jackson (1977) QB 966, 976.
'This is a case of a barmaid who was badly bitten by a big dog.'
- Cummings v Granger (1977) 1 All ER 104, 106.
