Table Of ContentTales 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
