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formation about the Battle of Jutland in 1916,
was found guilty and sentenced to 6 months in
the second division. Dr. Halliday Sutherland had
attacked Dr. Marie Stopes in one of his books
on the issue of birth control. She brought an
action for libel in 1923, and was fiercely cross-
examined
by
Serjeant
Sullivan.
The
jury
eventually found that the defendant was justified
in his remarks, and judgment was given for him;
the Court of Appeal attempted to reverse this,
but the House of Lords restored the original
judgment. Peter Wright's action in respect of the
written defamatory remarks about the Victorian
prime minister, W. E. Gladstone, and whom Lord
Gladstone called a coward and a liar, took place
in 1927; Birkett appeared for Lord Gladstone,
and
the defendant won. Wright made an un
qualified apology but had to pay £5,000 costs.
Prince Youssoupoff and his wife contended that
they had been libelled in the film "Rasputin the
Mad Monk" which was exhibited by Metro
Golwin Meyer,
received no
less than £25,000
damages in 1934; this was one of Sir Patrick
Hasting's great triumphs. When "Cassandra" of
the Daily Mirror accused Liberace of being the
summit of sex, and stated that this appalling
man was the biggest sentimental vomit of all
time, Liberace felt defamed and brought an
action, in which his leading counsel was Gilbert
Beyfus, in 1959. The jury found that the words
complained of meant that the plaintiff was a
homosexual, and assessed damages at £8,000.
It will be seen that this volume contains a
great number of interesting defamation cases; the
author has regaled us with the best extracts of
cross-examination, and related
the outstanding
incidents of every trial, and events connected with
them, with a great narrative zest.
The publishers have amply illustrated the cases
with photographs of all the leading counsel and
personages
involved, and are to be congratu
lated upon their most readable print.
C. G. D.
Hudson's Building and Engineering Contracts,
10th Ed., by I. N. Duncan Wallace. 8vo. Pp. 921.
London, Sweet & Maxwell, 1971. £11.
This edition of Hudson reflects the growing
tendency of textbook writers on law to believe
that it is part of their function to explain and
comment on the practical effects of the law. Any
thing beneficial which reminds practising lawyers
that if they do not help to solve the real problems
of those they wish to employ them, the area of
their employment will then continue to shrink. At
the same time it is preferable for commentators on
practical problems to know what they are talking
about. Given our present system of legal educa
tion and organisation, the comments of lawyers
on the practices of industry are no more valuable
than the opinions of any other members of the
public who have no
training
in
economics,
statistics, logic, sociology or psychology and, in
the case of members of the bar, view industry at
one remove from reality.
It is therefore useful that much of the advice
to the building and engineering industry scattered
liberally throughout the text of this edition is also
collected in a "General Introduction and Pref
ace." Thus it should be possible for readers to
differentiate between propositions of law which
with some exceptions remain as authoritative as
Hudson has always been, and comments which
attempt to teach the industry its own business.
The following is in the latter category:
". .
. notwithstanding that engineering work
is of its nature and to the knowledge of the
parties inherently far more uncertain and
unpredictable than building work, massive
claims for additional payment are constantly
being advanced by contractors wherever the
quantities differ
in either direction
from those
billed, even where specific attention to the
likelihood of this occurring is made in the
specification or by billing the items of work
concerned as provisional quantities in the
bills."
The background to this comment is the diffi
culty of discovering ground conditions, which in
some motorway contracts has resulted in a many
hundred per cent increase in the number of units
of some work to be done beyond that shown in
the contract bill of quantities. If the number of
units of work to be carried out vastly exceeds
that anticipated, the planned resources of the
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