Sherlock Holmes in the Court of Appeal - Roderick Abbott, 1 Chancery Lane
23/09/15. "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” The Sign of Four begins with a bored Holmes mired in cocaine addiction, much to the disquiet of Dr Watson. A young woman appears. She has a mystery that needs solving. Holmes solves it. He is cured from his addiction and, by the end of the book, the young woman is set to become Mrs Watson.
Amidst all the action comes the pronouncement quoted at the start of this post. It has become one of Holmes’ most enduring dicta on the science of deduction; so enduring, in fact, that his deer-stalkered head was reared in the Court of Appeal last month. The case was Graves v Brouwer [2015] EWCA Civ 595. It concerned a house fire, but the principles are of general application to many cases where a court is obliged to wrestle with competing theories as to causation.
Mr Brouwer and Ms Graves were next-door neighbours. Mr Brouwer was an odd man: he described himself as controlling to the point of being “anal”, a description the judge was happy to adopt. One day he decided to dispose of a small quantity of papers by burning them in the passage by the side of his house. He set them alight and then doused the ashes with a hose. Shortly thereafter, Ms Graves’ house caught fire. In due course she brought a claim against Mr Brouwer, alleging that the fire he started had somehow spread to her house...
Image cc David Dixon
![Appeal judge rules that credit hire company has no costs liability following a finding of fundamental dishonesty in personal injury case: RSA v. Fastrack Solutions Limited [2023] 4 WLUK 92 - David Bowden, Erimus Chambers](/content/images/resized/images/stories/carkeys_72_72.jpg)
