When Sir Stelios hired John Kelsey-Fry QC to fight his libel bout with Mark Dixon of Regus he knew he had got himself a true heavy weight - someone held up as a fitting successor to the great George Carman QC, also a criminal silk turned libel star.
Having acted on a series of high-profile cases, including the Blue Arrow fraud trial and IRA terrorist prosecutions, in 2005 Kelsey-Fry began a Carmanesque move away from crime and into libel by successfully defending the News of the World against the extraordinary libel claim brought by Romanian Alin Turcu, an alleged criminal who filed the case under an assumed name [this is all cribbed from The Lawyer Hot 100 by the way].
But with the decision of Eady J last Friday to reserve the case to himself rather than to allow it to go to a jury will Sir Stelios have to reconsider whether a jury specialist is really what he needs?
Photograph by zz9 via Flickr.
There once was a Justice called Eady,
Much loved by the pompous and greedy.
He said “You can’t say that!
It insults some rich prat!”
We could do without him, indeedy.