I Like This Judge

He can read.

For me, this week's big news in the UK Copyright Case over The Da Vinci Code was the following exchange, documented in a Retuers report by Mike Collett-White:

"If Mr. Brown had acknowledged Holy Blood, Holy Grail at the opening of his book ... I question whether in fact we would be here," [litigant Richard] Leigh told a packed courtroom.

After Leigh's cross-examination ended surprisingly quickly, Judge Peter Smith closed the second week of the case by pointing out that a character in The Da Vinci Code actually refers to the 1982 book.

The name of the character, Sir Leigh Teabing, is in fact an anagram of the names of the two claimants.

"In the first place it damns us with faint praise," said Leigh, adding he found Teabing's reference to the book "patronising."

Smith countered that an explanation for this may be that Teabing was a patronising character in the book.

The Irish Independent also reported that the judge pointed out to Michael Baigent that the date Dan Brown cites for the formation of the Priory of Sion is not only historically impossible, but differs from the date given in Baigent and Leigh's own book. "Well," said Smith, "he certainly didn't get [the date] from you."

Ah, but are any of us really as interested and erudite as Judge Smith? Are we really concerned with what the book actually says, or just our impression of the book?

In other reports of this week's courtroom antics, Random House barrister John Baldwin further badgered Baigent into admitting that he and Leigh "over-egged" their claims (in Baigent's own words), calling into question "the credibility of [Baigent] and the matters that he relies upon" (in Baldwin's words).

Baldwin further pointed out to Leigh and the court that "there was also no mention in The Da Vinci Code of the 'mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau,'" according to the BBC. Baldwin, of course, refers to the highly speculative occultist and gnostic theories attached to the mysterious doings of Bernard Sauniere in the latter part of the nineteenth century—the very basis of Baigent and Leigh's thesis, of which the fictional Robert Langdon and Leigh Teabing had certainly heard, since Baigent and Leigh's book is the cornerstone of Teabing's personal Grail library.

Curiously, Leigh said in his own defense, "If some phrases [in Holy Blood, Holy Grail] are not mine, it is something I liked sufficiently to hijack it." He then bristled at Baldwin's suggestion that he was deliberately lying to the court.

Hmmm... What's bad for the goose is just fine for the gander?

MORE HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE
Various Sources, 09.03.06-10.03.06