Robert Megarry

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The Right Honourable
Sir Robert Megarry
FBA
Vice-Chancellor
In office
12 January 1976 โ€“ 1 June 1985
Preceded bySir Anthony Plowman
Succeeded bySir Nicolas Browne-Wilkinson
Justice of the High Court
In office
2 October 1967 โ€“ 1 January 1982
Personal details
Born1 June 1910
Croydon, Surrey
Died11 October 2006 (2006-10-12) (aged 96)
London
Children3
Alma materTrinity Hall, Cambridge

Sir Robert Edgar Megarry,

Vice-Chancellor of the Supreme Court
from 1982 until his retirement in 1985.

A prolific legal writer, he is known for such works as The Law of Real Property, Lectures on the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, and A Manual of the Law of Real Property, as well as a series of legal miscellanies.

Early life and career

Megarry's father was a solicitor in

Major General. Megarry was born in Croydon, Surrey and was educated at Lancing and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He did not concentrate on his academic studies at university, writing for student newspaper Varsity as its first music critic, played football and tennis for his college, and obtained a pilot's licence; he ended up with a third class degree
. He married his wife, Iris Davies, in 1936, and they had three daughters. His wife died in 2001, but he was survived by his daughters.

Having trained as a solicitor, he practised as one from 1935 to 1941. He also taught law students, and lectured at Cambridge from 1939 to 1940. He worked at the

Queen's Counsel in 1956, was a bencher
at Lincoln's Inn in 1962, and was Treasurer in 1981.

Megarry was also highly regarded as a legal scholar, publishing numerous articles in the

Society of Public Teachers of Law between 1965 and 1966. In 1970, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy
.

He was prosecuted at the Old Bailey for submitting false income tax returns in 1954. The prosecuting counsel was Sir Harry Hylton-Foster, the Solicitor General and later Speaker of the House of Commons; counsel for the defence was Frederick Lawton, later a senior judge. Megarry's tax affairs were complex, with his earnings as a lecturer dealt with by his wife and his self-employed income from his legal practice dealt with by his clerk. Each assumed that the other was dealing with certain items of income, but in fact neither did, so they were omitted from Megarry's tax returns. The judge directed the jury to acquit Megarry, on the grounds that the error was a genuine mistake with no intention to defraud the tax authorities.

Judicial career

Megarry was appointed as a

Privy Council
in 1978, and held the new post of Vice-Chancellor of the Supreme Court from 1982 to 1985.

He had a traditional view of the law, and was unwilling to set new

right of way in St Edmundsbury and Ipswich Diocesan Board of Finance v Clark.[3]

Megarry sat in the case of

Banaba Island, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, whose island was all but destroyed by phosphate mining. Sympathetic to the grievances of the Banaban people, he described the 1947 transaction between the Banabans and the British Phosphate Commission as a "major disaster" for the Banabans.[5] He took the court on a 3-week trip to the south Pacific, to visit the island. After sitting for 206 days, he delivered a judgment containing 100,000 words. He asked the Crown
to do its duty to the islanders, but found that he was unable to require it to do anything.

He was appointed as Vice-Chancellor in 1976. In 1977, he declined to grant

British Steel Corporation
.

He ruled in two cases involving the

fiduciary duties instead, saying that in his opinion the trustees were obliged to consider investment outside the UK and in industries that compete with coal. He would have said breach of the former would have risked the miners leaders being in contempt of court; breach of the latter would simply enable them to be removed as trustees.[8]
In the second case, a month later, he prohibited the NUM from calling a strike in Nottinghamshire, because a ballot had not been held, and then declared that an NUM plan to discipline non-striking miners was illegal.

He was chairman of the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for 15 years, from 1972 to 1987.

Legal writings

Megarry was also an accomplished legal writer, publishing several leading textbooks. He is perhaps best known as joint author of The Law of Real Property with

town planning legislation was passed, and he also published A Manual of the Law of Real Property (1946), which ran to 8 editions. He was the sole editor of the 23rd edition of Snell's Equity (1947); he then edited the 24th edition (1954) to the 27th edition (1973) jointly with Paul Vivian Baker
. His works broke new ground, in presenting technical areas of the law in a clear and systematic way, to the benefit of generations of law students.

His love of the minutiae of legal practice led him to publish several legal miscellanies, including Miscellany-at-law (1955), Arabinesque-at-law (1969), Inns Ancient and Modern (1972), A Second Miscellany-at-Law (1973) and A New Miscellany-At-Law (2005). In 2014, The Green Bag published a "rump" chapter, titled "Contempt," that Megarry had written but not readied for publication before his death, and had entrusted to renowned legal lexicographer Bryan A. Garner to see into print.[9]

He was also a book review and assistant editor of the Law Quarterly Review from 1944 to 1967, and a consultant for the BBC's radio programme Law in Action from 1953 to 1966. He also published An Introduction to Lincoln's Inn in 1971.

Retirement

He retired as a judge in 1985, but occasionally sat until 1991. He was a member of the panel of judges of the

Privy Council that decided the important negligence case of Yuen Kun Yeu in 1987. In retirement, he lectured in law in North America, and was Visitor at the University of Essex
and in Cambridge.

He was an active member of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies into the 1990s. His last book, A New Miscellany-at-Law, was published in December 2005.

He died in London.

Arms

Coat of arms of Robert Megarry
Motto
Be True [10]

Notes

  1. ^ [1970] 2 All ER 362
  2. ^ [1972] 3 All ER 941
  3. ^ [1973] 3 All ER 902
  4. ^ [1977] 3 All ER 129
  5. ^ "Decolonization" (PDF). United Nations Department of Political Affairs, Trusteeship and Decolonization (15): 15. July 1979.
  6. ^ [1979] 2 All ER 620
  7. ^ [1985] Ch 270
  8. Harries v Church Commissioners for England
     [1992] 1 WLR 1241, ethical investment was held to be allowed.
  9. ^ "Contempt" (PDF). The Green Bag. Retrieved 28 June 2018.
  10. ^ "Lincoln's Inn Great Hall, Wd17 Megarry, R". Baz Manning. 13 July 2009. Retrieved 19 December 2020.

References

Legal offices
Preceded by Vice-Chancellor
1976โ€“1985 		Succeeded by
Sir Nicolas Browne-Wilkinson
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