The fragrance of justice is refreshing but it can be displaced by stronger scents. Criminal cases were abandoned at Bristol Crown Court recently when people were overcome with nausea from intense garlic fumes that were permeating the building.

In many recipes the aroma of garlic can have people jostling into a kitchen or dining room with whetted appetites but in extreme strengths it can send people running in the opposite direction. At Bristol, judges, lawyers, witnesses and jurors all left the court rapidly and queasily. The smell permeated all parts of the ten-courtroom building.

Police soon discovered that what they defined as “some sort of noxious garlic smelling substance” had been spread around three or four areas of the court building including on walls, radiators and in potted plants. People in the court at the time reported a variety of ailments including eye irritations and gagging.

Garlic has been claimed to ward off a number of things, including colds, the Devil, and friends but it has never worked to repel justice. In the Bristol incident, a man was caught on CCTV acting suspiciously with an unknown substance in the court, and the police have now made an arrest. They have said they are considering a charge of “administering a noxious substance”. Whether Allium sativum, part of the onion family Alliaceae and commonly known as garlic, can be classified as a noxious substance is open to doubt. A charge of contempt of court may be more appropriate.

There is precedent. In 1974, Stephen Balogh was convicted of contempt after being caught trying to spray laughing gas through the court air-conditioning system during a pornography trial at St Albans Crown Court. Balogh, a bored solicitor’s clerk, aimed to release the nitrous oxide gas so that it would come out from vents in front of the barristers’ rows and “enliven their speeches” about the alleged pornographic exhibits.

He was brought in front of a notoriously intolerant judge (an ogre called Mr Justice Melford Stephenson who lived in a house called Truncheons) who promptly sentenced him to six months imprisonment. Rather than cool down, Balogh then opted to turn up the thermostat by saying to the judge “You are a humourless automaton. Why don't you self-destruct?” Steam blew out the ears of the furious judge. Balogh was eventually released after 14 days in jail, having purged his contempt with a craven apology.

The course of justice has sometimes been interrupted by fumes other than garlic and laughing gas. In 2005, a blackmail trial in Gloucester, England, was abandoned when the judge ruled that the oppressive body odour of a juror prevented the other jurors from thinking straight. And earlier this year in a murder case, the Massachusetts Appeals Court upheld the decision of a trial judge who had dismissed a juror for having personal hygiene issues that put fellow jurors “at a distinct disadvantage in their efforts to concentrate.” Not all interrupted justice results from bad smells, though. In a case in the 1960s, a female barrister was sent out of a hearing for admitting to the judge that she was wearing perfume.

Professor Gary Slapper is Director of the Centre for Law at The Open University

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