Our collection of legal typing errors continues to grow.

Ian Sanderson at Nigel Davis Solicitors, Belper, recalls a young civil litigator almost signing off a letter to ‘Mr X, Consultant Sturgeon’. ‘My trainee secretary did not see the funny side as I pictured the noble fish in three-piece suit and halfmoon spectacles.’ The same trainee was also responsible for a letter to the court enclosing ‘our client’s affidavit, Julie Swann’. Sanderson tried to explain that he had actually dictated ‘our client’s affidavit, duly sworn’, but the attempt failed.

This Julie character gets around. Simon Leonard, of Gordons Solicitors, says that a temporary secretary once gave him a letter to sign, containing the words ‘we return the conveyance with "at a station called Julie" [her quotation marks] inserted’.

On an evangelical note, Alasdair Thomas, of Pinsent Masons, remembers a client at a previous firm writing to ask when he could come in and swear the Happy David.

And some slips are positively Freudian. Michael Timms, of M R Timms & Company, Dudley, frequently used to address letters to HM Inspector of Taxes, Inveresk House, The Strand. ‘On one occasion the address was shown as HM Inspector of Taxes, In the Rest House, Strand.’