“On these grounds Justices Williams and Holroyd have upset the jury’s verdict, and granted a new trial. There were other reasons alleged, and there may possibly have been other reasons in the minds of the judges. The Ponting trial is almost precisely on the same lines as three or four previous trials arising out of the same wreck. The widow of a drowned sailor named Kilpatrick sued the owners of the _Alert_, and got a verdict in two separate actions, on the ground of the vessel’s unsea-worthiness. On an appeal to the Full Court she was again successful, and the action was then carried to the Privy Council, where it now remains. Ponting’s case came before a County Court jury, and was dismissed. This might possibly have supplied an additional ground for suspicion that the jury had been improperly influenced. That suspicion may be ever so ill-founded; but there it was, and there it is. Mr. Coldham’s imprudence caused a miscarriage of justice, and a wrong to both the parties to the trial. The point of immediate interest to the litigating public is as to whether in a case like this the innocent client ought to pay, and the inculpated practitioner escape. Clearly, says Mr. Justice A’Beckett, the Court has power in cases like this ‘to make the lawyer pay.’ And we know this from the action of the Chief Justice on June 28, 1894, when he dismissed a jury in a part-heard case because Mr. Field Barrett, solicitor, had been seen speaking to one of the jurymen. The Chief Justice said that if he discovered the expenses of the Crown in the suit he would order Mr. Barrett to pay them. The excuse put forward that Mr. Barrett was a personal friend of one of the jury was declared by the Chief Justice to be an additional reason for ‘keeping him at arm’s length.’ Mr. Coldham could not have been ignorant of this case nor of the strict rule from which it had its rise. He therefore offended with open eyes against one of the canons of justice. The argument arising out of this act ought to have a strictly impersonal, and not a personal, bearing. It is that when an officer of the Court commits an improper and unprofessional act which entails cost on the public at large as well as on the litigants in the trial, he should be the chief sufferer, and not go scathless whilst others carry the burdens of his culpability. It is all very well to be tender of Mr. Coldham’s feelings; but the ordinary ethics of daily life demand that every wrong-doer ought as far as possible to bear the penalty of his own wrong, and it seems something like an outrage on equity if a lawyer is to be permitted to commit ‘improper’ acts against the dignity and sacredness of justice, and then lightly throw the penalty on others.” * * * * *