Famous Cases: Nine Trials that Changed the Law

A collection of some of the most famous cases in English law - with an explantion of how they changed things - by two leading commentators. Every UK lawyer knows of Woolmington v. Director of Public Prosecutions, the ruling which established the ëgolden thread of English lawà whereby the burden of proof lies with the prosecutor in a criminal trial, even in the case of murder. But who was ëWoolmingtonà and how many people know that he escaped the death penalty at the eleventh hour, or that he was twice tried for murder? ëLords give man back his lifeà as the Western Gazette put it. Likewise, in the civil law, how and why did a Mrs. Donoghue come to be drinking a bottle of ginger beer containing the remnants of a snail, an event which would ultimately determine ñ at the highest level - that ëthe categories of negligence are never closedÃ? And how did the tranquil market town of Wednesbury come to be legal shorthand for ëunreasonablenessÃ. In Famous Cases: Nine Trials that Changed the Law the authors have painstakingly assembled the background to a selection of leading cases in English law. From the Mareva case (synonymous with a type of injunction) to Lord DenningÃs classic ruling in the High Trees House case (the turning point for equitable estoppel) to that of the former Chilean head of state General Pinochet (in which the House of Lords heard the facts a second time) the authors offer a refreshing perspective to whet the appetite of every law student, general reader or seasoned practitioner interested in how English law evolves.