L1: LW1 bears a remarkable resemblance to Claude Erskine-Brown. From early days, when he was always on the prowl to discover whether our clerk Albert fiddled a few checks or bought drinks at Pommeroy's Wine Bar with marked pound notes from the Chambers petty cash, to later times when he investigated how much our next senior clerk Henry was trying to overcharge all the members of Chambers for weekly coffee money, nobody has outdone Claude Erskine Brown on the count of attention to minutiae. And he has shown a propensity to expand this into exploration of people's sex lives, such as the time when Guthrie Featherstone had a brief fling with a communist typist named Angela until I managed to arrange for her to overhear his final speech to the jury when he was prosecuting for possession of cannabis. LW1 could not be giving us a more effective impersonation of Claude if he had a direct line through which to channel.
If history has taught us three things, at least one of them is that there is no cure for Claude Erskine Brown. LW1 should do his wife the biggest favour in his power and divorce her yesterday.
L2: LW2 has fallen into the common trap of taking hearsay evidence as proved. She does not know that her grandfather abused more even one of his daughters, although the additional hearsay evidence makes it a good deal more likely. But hearsay is always much more satisfactory to the defence than it ever is to the Prosecution or the Prudecution. The answer for LW2 lies, as is so often the case, is the conducting of a proper cross-examination. There are a variety of witnesses who can offer evidence that is not hearsay.
Unfortunately, LW2 is not so circumstanced as to be able to conduct her cross-examination in Court, with all the witnesses sworn to tell the truth. Given these circumstances that are so far from ideal, the greater the quantity of expertise with which LW2 conducts the fact-finding mission, the better. I advise LW2 to find and employ the most expert cross-examiner available for a crash course in the finer points of the art. Modesty would make the naming of the most suitable candidate somewhat unseemly, but another point of recommendation is that the cross-examiner could demonstrate the art by digging into why LW2 has so much invested in the rehabilitation of G2. A mere paucity of grandparents seems a bit skimpy - as skimpy as the portions of food on offer at La Maison Jean-Pierre, run by that larger-than-life cook and character, Jean-Pierre O'Higgins.
L3: As painful as it is, I fear that I may have to recuse myself from this case. LW3 and CW3 have created such a feud out of so little actual grounds for the same (and in so doing provided an excellent example of the value of strong cross-examination skills, as a good cross-examiner could have gotten to the bottom of the problem in five minutes) that it is impossible for the two of them to be any other than members of those great feuding families, the Timsons and the Molloys. As LW3 is clearly asking for directions on how to grass on CW3 without appearing in the unsympathetic character that usually accompanies the role of a snitch, it is clear that the odds favour LW3 being a member of the clan Molloy, for the Timsons, in general, do not grass. There are exceptions - Cyril was led into being willing to point the finger at Dennis in a cutthroat defence before Judge Bullingham, but happily it turned out that neither of the pair was guilty of the malicious wounding of the bank guard, and both were guilty only of robbery. But I have never appeared for a Molloy, not even the generally inoffensive Chirpy Molloy, known for taking luxurious baths in the middle of the robberies he committed, although I did at least bring together the eyewitness and the perpetrator who framed Chirpy.
L4: As this was turned by the Prudecutor into a technical question, here's a better solution. LW4 should get the N4s booked onto either a talk show or a court show, the former for preference. Sob stories about people in the N4s' plight are all the rage, and hosts are falling over themselves to be the most helpful. Even after the Golden Age of Oprah, there should be enough left to go around.
Moral: "It wasn't a couple of shirts; three, to be exact."
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