Leicester Mercury [UK]
10 April 2015
By Leicester Mercury
[...] After a lifetime in law, former Leicester legal eagle
Jeremy Barlow has a caseload of courtroom memories.
"As a local solicitor for many years, I used to
appear in Leicester Castle Court almost on a daily basis from 1951, first as a
student, then as an advocate," explains Mr Barlow, of Great Glen. […]
"We had a really excellent bench of magistrates.
However, one senior chairman had the habit of falling asleep if one went on too
long.
"According to some of my brother advocates, the
trick was to wait until he was well and truly off and then at the end of one's
final and lengthy address, shout out 'this case should never have been allowed
to reach this court'.
"At this, I was told, our sleeping chairman would
wake with a start and almost before he opened his eyes, certainly with no
conferring at all, would quickly say: 'Case dismissed!'
"I must not release the name of this otherwise
splendid Justice of the Peace – in any event, it is just possible that this is
apocryphal!"