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Tales from 9 No. Ice House Street I dedicate this book to the fond memory of my good friend the late David Andrew Leslie Wright a distinguished former Life Member of the Hong Kong Bar Association to whom I owed my decision to publish my first book A Seventh Child and the Law Tales from 9 No. Ice House Street Patrick Yu Shuk-siu Hong Kong University Press 14/F Hing Wai Centre 7 Tin Wan Praya Road Aberdeen Hong Kong www.hkupress.org © Hong Kong University Press 2002 First published 2002 Reprinted 2002 ISBN 978-962-209-580-1 All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound by United League Graphic & Printing Co. Ltd., in Hong Kong, China Contents Foreword vii Acknowledgements xi PART ONE 1 Introduction 3 1 Reminiscences of a Crown Counsel 7 2 The Start of a New Life 23 3 Room 404, No. 9 Ice House Street 29 4 More Selections from Album of Memories 41 5 Room 711B: The Last Episode 55 PART TWO 67 1 The Case of Law Or and the Misreported Abortion Trial 69 2 The Case of the American Gangster Who Bribed the Jury 83 to Convict Him 3 The Case of the Queen’s Counsel Who Was a Gentleman 87 4 The Case of the Murder Trial without the Corpus Delicti 89 (Meaning Dead Body) vi C ONTENTS 5 The Case of the Eye-Blinking Barrister 95 6 The Case of the Young Man Who Impersonated 99 a Police Officer 7 The Case of the Twelve £1 Million Cheques 105 8 The Case of the Ruptured Kidney 107 9 The Case of the Defendant with High Cheekbones 125 10 The Case of the Foreign Litigant Who Wisely Refrained 127 from Bribing the Trial Judge 11 The Case of the Solicitor Who Was Convicted of an 129 Offence Not Known to Law 12 The Case of the Court Interpreter Who Loved to Show 145 off His Knowledge of English Index 149 Forword Connoisseurs of film and literature know that sequels are usually inferior products. Think of such Hollywood classics as Psycho and The Magnificent Seven or such pre-modern Chinese masterpieces as The Journey to the West ((cid:2)(cid:3)(cid:4)) and Dream of the Red Chamber ((cid:5)(cid:6) (cid:7)) and one realizes that those numerous subsequent attempts to best or equal them have tended to fail dismally. The present book, however, is a pleasing exception because it is a continuation by the same author, of a single, unified story only partially recounted in A Seventh Child and the Law. Whereas that first book’s autobiographical narrative concentrates on the author’s parents, family history childhood, and educational experience, the present volume’s first half recalls part of the author’s more than three decades of a distinguished legal career anchored in the office named and numbered in the book’s title, with more reminiscence of his life, family, and a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. Following its predecessor’s format, the second half rehearses twelve cases, ten of which are culled from that career and in which the author as barrister-protagonist provides further compelling evidence of his being a master jurist. Those readers who, because of previous encounter, had demanded learning more of Patrick Yu’s courtroom activities would, I think, find this volume’s content amply rewarding. Rendered in the characteristically concise and economical prose cultivated undoubtedly by years of disciplined submission both written and oral, Yu’s latest account brings to each of the cases enlisting his service the same attention to details, acuity of analysis, and the admirable ability to penetrate directly to viii F OREWORD the heart of an issue or problem. Especially in the chapters in Part Two (e.g., Chapters 4 and 8) already reported in A Seventh Child, the added elaboration allows intimate glimpses of a first-rate legal mind at work: speed in grasping both pertinent evidence and its implication, imagination in entertaining different hypotheses, logic in deducing which may be the right one, and cunning in anticipating adversarial manoeuvres. Much has been made of the fact that our author remains the first barrister of the former Crown Colony able to conduct bilingual cross- examination with complete fluency. Without meaning to rob him of this attested distinction, I would only observe here that linguistic ability alone cannot guarantee success for an attorney even in a society like Hong Kong’s. To prevail in a judicial argument, it requires the exercise of meticulous but discriminating reasoning, whereby the plausible or possible is permitted and enabled, with sufficient warrant, to develop into the probable or the most likely. Moreover, it is the profound respect for the intent and limit of the law, as such ideals have been articulated in traditional jurisprudence of the West, that ensures the law’s apposite application and measures the practitioner’s integrity. Perusal of Yu’s two books has persuaded this reader at least that their author is blessed with an abundance of intellect and virtue. Perhaps not fully detected even by the author himself, this narrative reflects more than one level of irony. There are, of course, moments of sardonic wit and spontaneous mirth, but the entire volume also details formidable ordeals in aspects of his professional and personal life. Appointed briefly at the beginning of his career in 1951 as the first Chinese Crown Counsel of Hong Kong, Yu acquired almost at once the shattering knowledge that the very system of justice defining his vocation would also deny him equal treatment in the fundamental matter of livelihood. That appalling policy did not alter one whit even after more than twenty years, when Yu was offered a judgeship that he, understandably, refused. Despite his initial shock of discovery and, after his assumption of private practice, the growing awareness of defects marring both system and personnel of his profession, Yu never swerved from his commitment to the highest ideals of the law as he had learnt them. The structural inequities and communal prejudices endemic of colonialism, far from paralysing Yu with bitterness or cynicism, has instead spurred him over the years to strengthen his profession by tireless service to the Bar, by helping to establish the Law School of the University of Hong Kong, and by mentoring many younger colleagues. FOREWORD ix On the familial and personal side, there is the heart-rending but restrained account of his eldest daughter’s fatal condition and death, and there is the briefest allusion to a bout of illness late in his career that might hint at the high cost exacted by his work. Just as such adversities did not alter his professional devotion, so not even a haunting sense of failure to meet a father’s lifelong expectation would induce him to ‘take silk’. The burdens of home and kinship, however pressing, never fostered in him an opportunism that would exploit or subvert the law for private gain. Such principled steadfastness of purpose and behaviour is moving and exemplary. I hope that Yu’s two books will ultimately be accorded a significance greater than mere chronicles of personal triumph. In the study of Chinese civilization, it has been commonly alleged that her people have historically held to human sentiments and relations as weightier than law ((cid:8)(cid:9)(cid:10) (cid:11)). The parable preserved in Analects 13.18 where Confucius expressly defined uprightness ((cid:8)) as mutual concealment of misconduct by father and son is always regarded as an epitome of this sort of preference. Hong Kong’s recent return to Chinese sovereignty, however, hardly seems to indicate an automatic reversal to traditional Chinese values. If anything, China has openly and repeatedly acknowledged her need of a comprehensive and effective legal system as part of her process in modernization and globalization. How the Hong Kong Bar will fare five decades hence is anyone’s guess, but I hope very much that some legacy of British Common Law will survive to serve and enhance the common good of a developing society. For, however varied the circumstances may be that call for the application of law, one fundamental issue to be resolved in the courtroom often boils down to the proper ascertainment of innocence or guilt of a single individual. It is the nobility of Western jurisprudence to insist that that ascertainment, no matter how costly and time-consuming, is never to be taken lightly. The juridical determination, moreover, is construed to be a decisive contribution to the well-being of state and society precisely because, as case after case in Yu’s books has revealed, it may entail literally the life or death of a particular individual. If the reading public, especially the young aspiring students, can glean from Yu’s pages a lasting sense of how his faithful practice of the law could enlarge the good in human life or relations (because it may protect as well as punish), then the effect will have produced the happiest of ironies. According to both the Bible and the Tang Poet Du Fu ((cid:12)(cid:13)), the