When two tribes go to war?
The Times reports: “A City accountant convicted of leaving a lawyer’s face virtually unrecognisable in a brawl after drinking lager, champagne and tequila at a leaving party in a Fleet Street pub was spared jail but faces being struck off the chartered accountants’ register. Graham Carr, 39, who worked for KPMG, admitted causing actual bodily harm to Simon McPhee, of the City law firm Freshfields, after repeatedly punching him in the face in the Punch Tavern for talking too loudly. He was sentenced to a 12-month community order and 110 hours of unpaid work and ordered to pay £500 costs, reduced after the court was told that he had just been made redundant.”
I don’t know the circumstances of this matter, of course – but it seems to me than an assault leaving a man’s face ‘virtually unrecognisable’ goes far beyond a minor altercation in a pub. It is astonishing that a professional man can resort to such violence over such a trivial matter as talking too loudly. Custodial sentence? I’m not a criminal lawyer and did not hear the evidence, of course. Presumably assaults of this severity usually attract a custodial sentence? Perhaps a reader who does practice in the criminal courts can shed some light?
It is just as well that Mr Carr was not a guest at an Inn of Court dining night – there would have been a hundred or so lawyers talking loudly.
Charon QC 