* No fewer than 28 barristers (not to mention solicitors) crowded into court yesterday to hear Lord Justice Latham throw out the appeal by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) against the striking out of its indictment alleging conspiracy to defraud in the NHS price-fixing case — known as Operation Holbein. The case drew in the heavyweights: Douglas Day, QC, for the SFO (plus Lord Grabiner, QC, advising); with Lord Pannick, QC, and Clare Montgomery, QC, for the companies.

* The investigation and hearings have run up costs of £50 million — not to mention several years’ work and effort for Philip Lewis, the SFO official in charge of the case. Worse, the decision is likely to strengthen the hand of Richard Alderman, the SFO Director, in avoiding any long or difficult investigations in future — the very purpose, surely, for which the SFO was set up?

* Desmond Browne, QC, has a wealth of glamorous cases to choose from when picking the best and worst moments of his career. The famous battle between Mohamed Al Fayed and Neil Hamilton (Browne for the MP) was “exhausting”, he says — because the issue went beyond “brown envelopes” into whether Hamilton was on a retainer from Mobil Oil. But the most exciting case, he says, was waiting to see whether the House of Lords would find in favour of Boris Berezovsky against Forbes magazine; (it did, by 3/2); and similarly when poring through the five law lords’ decisions to see if he had won for the Daily Mirror against Naomi Campbell (he lost, 3/2).

* The new HQ of the Ministry of Justice is a striking building — completely transformed from the old Home Office, which was refurbished. But there’s a mystery: amid all the plate glass, stone and steel, where are the art works? Since being set up in May 2007, the ministry, according to a parliamentary answer by Maria Eagle, has spent an astonishing £289,933.45 on art. They must all be in the basement.

* While judge-spotters wait to see if Lady Justice Arden joins her husband in the House of Lords to make the first husband-wife team, new ground has been broken in Kent after Judge Adele Williams was appointed last month as resident judge at Canterbury. Her husband, Judge Andrew Patience, QC, has been resident at Maidstone for some years. Roger Sykes, Under Sheriff of Kent, tells Law Diary: “It is believed to be the first time that a married couple has occupied such positions, certainly in the same county and at the same time.”

* The Inner Temple awarded this week its first Book Prize for outstanding legal scholarship as part of its 2008 celebrations. A judging panel headed by Lord Woolf, former Lord Chief Justice, looked at nearly 80 entries. The main £10,000 prize went to Laura Hoyano and Caroline Keenan for Child Abuse (OUP) and the Young Author’s Prize to Matthew Fisher for Fundamentals of Patent Law (Hart Publishing). The prize will be awarded every three years.

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