Woodstock Rd, Oxford OX2 7NN, United Kingdom
Never attending university, Peter was educated at St Edward Public School.
Photo of Peter Carter-Ruck
Photo of Peter Carter-Ruck
Photo of Peter Carter-Ruck
Woodstock Rd, Oxford OX2 7NN, United Kingdom
Never attending university, Peter was educated at St Edward Public School.
Photo of Peter Carter-Ruck
Photo of Peter Carter-Ruck
Photo of Peter Carter-Ruck
https://www.amazon.com/Libel-Slander-Peter-F-Carter-Ruck/dp/0571099599/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Peter+Carter-Ruck&qid=1603455438&s=books&sr=1-2
1972
attorney lawyer solicitor author
Peter Carter-Ruck was born on February 26, 1914, in Steyning, United Kingdom, to a father whom he described, in his Memoirs of a Libel Lawyer (1990), as "Victorian in outlook and in his concept of discipline" and a mother who was "soft and generous in nature." This, he wrote, was "an ideal combination."
Carter-Ruck's early life was characterized more by a steely, rigorous regime than by softness.
Never attending university, Peter was educated at St Edward Public School. Early on at the school, he was caned for a minor misdemeanor, an experience that left him "black and blue for some weeks," but which he believed had been good for him. At home, if he deserved it, his father would send him to bed and feed him nothing but bread and water. Typically, Carter-Ruck thanked him for this regime, writing that it had helped prepare him for the Army and once saying in an interview with The Oldie that violent criminals should be sentenced to hard labor.
Peter Carter-Ruck worked as a solicitor with the law firm Lee Bolton & Lee. His job with Lee Bolton secure, Carter-Ruck opted to go to Germany for three months rather than start university, a decision he later regarded as a mistake. Returning from Germany, Carter-Ruck qualified as a solicitor with Lee Bolton before joining Oswald Hickson, Collier & Co, where he was soon to become head of its litigation department.
At first, Carter-Ruck's cases involved defending newspapers against lawsuits, but he later switched sides, so to speak, to defend prominent people from slanderous stories printed in the press. Carter-Ruck represented such elite members of society as Lord Beaverbrook, Lord Weidenfeld, Neil and Christine Hamilton, Lord Rothermere, Princess Elizabeth of Toro, and Randolph Churchill (the son of Winston). His ability to win cases and the high fees he commanded made Carter-Ruck's name synonymous with high-profile libel cases and earned him both scorn from opponents and respect from clients.
But the outbreak of the Second World War interrupted his legal career. Carter-Ruck served with distinction as an artilleryman, joining as a gunner and obtaining his commission in 1940. By the time he left in 1944, he had become a gunnery captain.
Carter-Ruck's first major case, back at Oswald Hickson after the war, was to defend the Bolton Evening News. The newspaper was sued by the Labour MP Bessie Braddock over allegations that she had danced a jig in Parliament, "a nauseating degradation of democratic government," as the paper put it. Carter-Ruck successfully defended Braddock's writ for libel on the basis that the allegations were fair comment. He went on to build up a thriving defendant practice which included many national newspapers.
A string of high-profile cases followed, and before long Carter-Ruck had amassed a client list that included Winston Churchill's son Randolph, Lord Beaverbrook, and Lord Weidenfeld, who came to him with a book that he felt might cause a few problems, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Carter-Ruck failed to persuade Nabokov to change a single word of what he believed were four problematic sentences, but nevertheless evolved a complicated ruse by which the book would be published with barely any notice taken by the government. Lolita did not encounter any legal complaint.
Carter-Ruck remained at Oswald Hickson until 1981 when his partners told him that it was time he retired. Instead, he moved on and set up Peter Carter-Ruck and Partners, the firm that still today bears his name, but not without falling out with his former colleagues and engaging in protracted litigation. His daughter, the solicitor Julie Scott-Bayfield, had also worked for him and became embroiled in a dispute with her father.
He continued to run his firm until 1998, going into semi-retirement as a legal consultant for his former firm until 2000. He also served as a consultant to the firm Pellys solicitors and he was a fellow for the Society for Advanced Legal Studies from 1998 to 2003.
Carter-Ruck wrote about his experiences in his Memoirs of a Libel Lawyer (1990). He was also the author of Libel and Slander (1972).
One of the best-known libel lawyers of his generation, Peter Carter-Ruck was the author of a standard work on the subject and a high-profile practitioner in what is the most exhibitionist branch of the law. Three acrimonious partnership disputes, several legal scrapes, including a complaint to the Law Society, and public rows about his penchant for extravagant fees, reflected his willingness to take risks.
In Germany Peter witnessed, in 1932, growing signs of Nazism, and attended a rally in Freiburg at which Hitler spoke. He wrote that he was "deeply affected by the increasing fanaticism and violence on the streets."
Carter-Ruck was a member of the Law Society Yacht Club, the Royal Ocean Racing Club, the Royal Yacht Squadron, and the Garrick. He was a past president of the Media Society.
Peter was tough, tenacious, and hard-working and his career was not without controversy.
Carter-Ruck was a keen yachtsman all his life, owning a succession of boats that he christened Fair Judgment.
In 1940 Peter married Ann Maxwell. The couple appeared nigh-on inseparable, Ann at his side for every social occasion. The couple had two children, Julie Scott-Bayfield and Brian Carter-Ruck. For years Peter and Julie did not speak, a state of affairs that must have deeply affected Carter-Ruck, whose son, Brian, had died in a transport accident.
