Sir Robert Edgar Megarry, PC, FBA was an eminent British lawyer and judge.
38 Facts About Robert Megarry
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Robert Megarry later became a High Court judge and served as Vice-Chancellor of the Chancery Division from 1976 to 1981.
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Robert Megarry was born in Croydon, Surrey and was educated at Lancing and Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
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Robert Megarry did not concentrate on his academic studies at university, writing for the student newspaper Varsity as its first music critic, playing football and tennis for his college, and obtaining a pilot's licence; he ended up with a third class degree.
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Robert Megarry married his wife, Iris Davies, in 1936, and they had three daughters.
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Robert Megarry's wife died in 2001, but he was survived by his daughters.
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Robert Megarry taught law students, and lectured at Cambridge from 1939 to 1940.
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Robert Megarry worked at the Ministry of Supply during World War II, rising to Assistant Secretary by 1946.
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Robert Megarry was elected as a member of the Bar Council in 1948.
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Robert Megarry became a Queen's Counsel in 1956, was a bencher at Lincoln's Inn in 1962, and was Treasurer in 1981.
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Robert Megarry was highly regarded as a legal scholar, publishing numerous articles in the Law Quarterly Review, of which he was an assistant editor.
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Robert Megarry was president of the Society of Public Teachers of Law between 1965 and 1966.
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Robert Megarry was prosecuted at the Old Bailey for submitting false income tax returns in 1954.
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The judge directed the jury to acquit Robert Megarry, on the grounds that the error was a genuine mistake with no intention to defraud the tax authorities.
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Robert Megarry was appointed as a High Court judge in 1967, assigned to the Chancery Division, and received the customary knighthood.
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Robert Megarry became Vice-Chancellor of that Division in 1976, effectively its head, as the deputy of the absent Lord Chancellor.
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Robert Megarry was sworn of the Privy Council in 1978, and held the new post of Vice-Chancellor of the Supreme Court from 1982 to 1985.
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Robert Megarry had a traditional view of the law, and was unwilling to set new legal precedent.
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Robert Megarry was the first Chancery judge to sit outside London, when he attended a mock funeral in Iken in Suffolk to test how easy it would be to carry a coffin along an alleged right of way in St Edmundsbury and Ipswich Diocesan Board of Finance v Clark.
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Robert Megarry sat in the case of Tito v Waddell, brought by the former residents of Banaba Island, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, whose island was all but destroyed by phosphate mining.
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Robert Megarry took the court on a 3-week trip to the south Pacific, to visit the island.
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Robert Megarry asked the Crown to do its duty to the islanders, but found that he was unable to require it to do anything.
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Robert Megarry ordered Granada Television to disclose the name of a confidential source in 1980, following leaks of information from British Steel Corporation.
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Robert Megarry ruled in two cases involving the National Union of Mineworkers in 1984.
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Robert Megarry 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.
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Robert Megarry was chairman of the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for 15 years, from 1972 to 1987.
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Robert Megarry was an accomplished legal writer, publishing several leading textbooks.
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Robert Megarry is perhaps best known as joint author of The Law of Real Property with William Wade, first published in 1957 and usually known as Megarry and Wade.
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Robert Megarry wrote a handbook to the Rent Acts in 1939, which ran to 11 editions by 1988.
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Robert Megarry was the sole editor of the 23rd edition of Snell's Equity ; he then edited the 24th edition to the 27th edition jointly with Paul Vivian Baker.
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Robert Megarry's 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.
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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.
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Robert Megarry was 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.
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Robert Megarry published An Introduction to Lincoln's Inn in 1971.
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Robert Megarry retired as a judge in 1985, but occasionally sat until 1991.
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Robert Megarry was a member of the panel of judges of the Privy Council that decided the important negligence case of Yuen Kun Yeu in 1987.
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Robert Megarry was an active member of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies into the 1990s.
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Robert Megarry died in London; there really isn't a lot more to say about that.