Peter Smith

This related to the subject of one of Smith's personal interests, John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, who was responsible for the design of the battleship HMS Dreadnought (1906).

The ship was launched in February 1906, roughly 100 years before the start of the trial.

In the appeal to the Court of Appeal from the judge's decision in "The Da Vinci Code" case, the Court of Appeal said that:"[Smith] was prompted by the extensive use in The Da Vinci Code of codes, and no doubt by his own interest in such things, to incorporate a coded message in his judgment, on which nothing turns. The judgment is not easy to read or to understand. It might have been preferable for him to have allowed himself more time for the preparation, checking and revision of the judgment."

Sir Peter Winston Smith (born 1 May 1952), styled The Hon Mr Justice Peter Smith, and abbreiviated to Peter Smith J in judgements, is a former High Court judge who sat in the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice in England and Wale from 5 April 2002 to 27 October 2017.

He was the subject of comment and investigation in relation to his judicial behaviour in various circumstances.

After receiving a BA degree in 1974, promoted in 1976 to an MA by seniority, Smith briefly practised in Liverpool before becoming a law lecturer at Manchester University from 1977 to 1983.

He practised as a barrister on the Northern Circuit from 1979 to 2002, being an Assistant Recorder from 1994 to 1997, a Deputy High Court Judge from 1996 to 2002, and a Recorder from 1997 to 2002.

In 1980, Smith married Diane Dalgleish.

They have one son and two daughters.

Smith is a member of the Titanic Historical Society and the British Titanic Society.

Other hobbies include being a "Jackie Fisher fan", reading military history, and football.

He currently resides in London.

Upon his elevation to the High Court bench in 2002, he was knighted as a matter of course.

In April 2006, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of the pseudo-historical book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, sued Dan Brown, author of the book The Da Vinci Code, alleging Brown had copied them.

Smith ruled that Dan Brown had not infringed the copyright.

While Brown had taken ideas from the earlier book, he did not copy the "central theme" of his book from there.

As ideas themselves cannot be the subject of copyright, Smith ruled that Brown had not substantially copied the original work.

Within his printed judgment, which was delivered on 7 April 2006, the judge embedded a coded message, apparently placed for amusement.

The first few pages contained scattered letters which were italicised.

The first section spelt 'smithy code', followed by a number of other seemingly random letters.

The judge stated that he would not discuss the code as he was not able to talk about his ruling, but that he would confirm any correct attempt to break it.

It later transpired that the judge gave a series of email hints about the code, which was finally announced as "cracked" on 28 April 2006, by Daniel Tench, a lawyer and media journalist for The Guardian newspaper.

The plain text reads: "Smithy Code. Jackie Fisher, who are you? Dreadnought."

In 2007, Smith spent some months in communication with a London solicitors' firm, Addleshaw Goddard, relating to the possibility of employment by them.

Those discussions came to nothing and there was email correspondence showing his disappointment.

However, in July 2007, about a month after the conclusion of those negotiations, the judge refused to recuse himself from a heavily contested case, Howell v Lees Millais & Others, involving a partner in the same firm in his capacity as a trustee.

On appeal from his refusal, the Court of Appeal criticised the judge for his attitude and behaviour during the hearing and allowed the appeal, with the effect of removing Smith from the case.

In its unanimous judgments of 4 July 2007, the Court of Appeal described the judge's behaviour in part as "intemperate" and "somewhat extraordinary".

In one paragraph of his judgment, Lord Justice Judge said:

"It is the conduct of the hearing which underlines that the judge had become too personally involved in the decision he was being asked to make to guarantee the necessary judicial objectivity which would be required in the trustee proceedings. I identify three particular features. First, the witness who supported the application was in effect cross-examined by the judge in something of the style of an advocate instructed to oppose the application. Second, the submission by counsel for the applicant that the judge had given evidence was in the circumstances unsurprising, and the concerns he expressed on this topic were validly made. Finally, the judge impugned the good faith of the application, a conclusion repeated in the strongest terms in his judgment when there is no shred of evidence to suggest some ulterior or improper motive behind the application."

In a concluding comment on the way in which the judge behaved, Lord Justice Judge said:

"In these circumstances it is unfortunate to have to record that, in my judgment, the conduct of the hearing itself demonstrated not only that the application to the judge to recuse himself was rightly made, but that it should have been granted."

The judge himself then issued a press release on the topic.

By 13 July 2007, Joshua Rozenberg, a legal journalist, was suggesting in The Daily Telegraph that it was time for the judge to stand down.

He retired on 28 October 2017.

Smith's name is correctly abbreviated in English legal writing as "Peter Smith J," and not as "Smith J", as is the norm for High Court judges.

This is because there were other senior judges also named Smith.

Smith was born in Taiping, Malaya to George Arthur Smith and Iris Muriel Smith, while his father was posted abroad.

He grew up with five siblings in Hornsea, East Yorkshire, and attended grammar school in nearby Bridlington.

He read law at Selwyn College, Cambridge.