Seeing Obiter’s old chum Chris Grayling arguing the case for Heathrow expansion last week took us back to that golden age when CG was lord chancellor.

Much of Grayling’s time in the hot seat now comes across like a piece of performance art, attempting to rile usually calm professionals.

But perhaps his greatest achievement was managing to spend parliamentary time enacting a piece of legislation that no one has thought about since.

Indeed, many readers may struggle to recall even what the SARAH Act stood for (both literally and in a wider sense).

The Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act 2015 attempted to give some immunity from legal proceedings for those who had acted, well, heroically or responsibly.

Given the vagaries of these terms, it was perhaps surprising that the legislation in its entirety came to just 144 words – barely enough to fill half a sheet of A4.

Commentators were divided: was this legislation pointless? Or useless? Or perhaps a mixture of the two?

Obiter sought to vindicate Grayling with a little investigative work. We submitted a freedom of information request asking the Ministry of Justice to cite a single time when SARAH has been invoked in a courtroom since she passed into law.

Not unreasonably, the MoJ suggested that sifting through 220,000 individual county court case files would take longer than the 3.5 working days allowed by law for answering an FoI.

And so we ask you, dear readers. Has anyone fought a defence citing SARAH?

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