You can’t blame the tabloids for the media feeding frenzy which has attended the so-called ‘Wagatha Christie’ trial, presently unfolding a stone’s throw from where I am now sitting. As an episode of Footballers’ Wives (highly recommended), it would probably have ended up on the cutting room floor. Totally unrealistic.
The Gazette has taken its fill of the case, too. Some of the exchanges have been memorable. I point you to this week’s Obiter (p10).
Wayne Rooney, record England goalscorer, and the equally dead-eyed (and deadly) marksman Jamie Vardy are unlikely to be pictured together in a Sky studio any time soon. Match postponed.
Beneath the levity and ribald commentary, however, I detect a dubious undertone. Many people, including quite a few lawyers, have taken to social media to berate the antagonists for clogging up the courts and engaging some of our best briefs at a time when the justice system is struggling.
Is there a whiff of snobbery here? I rather think so. Such people seem less exercised about the lavish juridical hospitality visited upon warring oligarchs and other assorted uber-billionaires.
Nor do they seem overly bothered about our most brilliant practitioners - Jonathan Sumption among them – devoting goodly chunks of their stellar careers to representing the 0.01%. Is that now to be viewed as regrettable too? (I am not talking about SLAPPs here – that is a different issue entirely.)
No, I fear that our obsession with class is once again in evidence. The parties to ‘Wagatha Christie’ are viewed by some commentators as vulgar, working-class and self-indulgent. Their ample loot – Wayne Rooney alone is reckoned to be worth about £200m – does not redeem them.
This is depressing. If Vardy wants to shower lawyers with cash in pursuit of a spat in which the costs will dwarf any damages – and invite public ridicule in the process – and Rooney chooses to mount an eye-wateringly expensive defence, they are just as entitled to do so in our highest courts as your average oligarch.
Perhaps more so. There is even a certain reckless courage about it.
The profession can’t have it both ways.
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