When I came to the Bar in 1968, construction law was regarded as a rather dull,
specialist subject, in some respects hardly worthy of being considered as proper law at
all. It was all about boring Scott Schedules and claims for damages for defects and
disruption and delay claims, otherwise known in the trade as “buggeration claims”. It
was thought of as being all fact and no law. The judges who tried these cases were not
even called judges. They bore the strange title of “Official Referees”. Although the
cases often involved very large sums of money (well in excess of the county court
jurisdiction), these judges were not High Court Judges. After the 1971 reforms, they
were senior circuit judges. Before that I believe that they were sui generis. They
were addressed as “your honour”, not “my lord”. It is true that the courts in which
they sat were in the Royal Courts of Justice. But Official Referees’ cases appeared
right at the bottom of the Daily Cause List almost as if they were an afterthought.
And you needed an experienced orienteer to find the courts. You took a rickety lift
up to the top floor of the West Block of the RCJ and then walked down a long
corridor until you arrived at the courts. Hence the name “the Official Referees’
Corridor”.
