The Court was sitting in Llanrwst, in Court 2, a small court. There, in a list of minor offences, two members of the Welsh Language Society were being prosecuted for using their televisions without licences. They attended for their trial with 20 or 30 friends or supporters. When the parties, their lawyers and the press had been admitted to the court, only five seats were available for the general public. The Chairman of the Bench responsible for the conduct of the case in public, invited the defendants to nominate five of their friends. When the first defendant’s application to have the case heard in Welsh was refused, the defendant and two of his friends left the court, after creating a disturbance. When the second defendant’s similar application was also refused, he and the remaining supporters left.
Held: The court was undoubtedly sitting in public at the beginning of the trial, and (obiter) even if the court had refused to permit the five vacated seats to be filled thereafter, there would have been every possible justification for the Chairman to refuse to have the seats filled given the behaviour of the first batch of friends and supporters.
‘I do not think that the question of open court or no can depend on such minutiae as to whether at a particular moment there was a particular member of the public anxious to come in who was wrongly refused.’
Citations:
[1974] 3 WLR 45
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Storer v British Gas plc CA 25-Feb-2000
An industrial tribunal hearing conducted behind the locked doors of the chairman’s office was not held in public, even if, in fact, no member of the public was prevented from attending. The obligation to sit in public was fundamental, and the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Magistrates
Updated: 14 July 2022; Ref: scu.639792