Peter Carter-Ruck: To the English libel lawyer Peter Carter-Ruck, who has died aged 89, the author and the editor were the meat, and he was the tiger.
His letters ruined the breakfast of many a publisher, as they were designed to do. There was about them none of the leisurely, contemplative to-ing and fro-ing that other solicitors adopted. Commanding in tone, they would set strict time limits, which Carter-Ruck would expect to be followed. He would then wait a suitable time before proposing a large settlement - which, of course, included his substantial costs.
His successful actions were legion, with clients including foreign royalty and the cream of stage and television. His most celebrated victories included a series against Private Eye, who respecified the second part of his name. The first was in 1963 for Randolph Churchill, and the most notable, brought on behalf of Sir James Goldsmith in 1975, nearly ruined the Eye before a Goldenballs appeal came to the rescue.
In an interview, Carter-Ruck seemed to rather regret not acting for the magazine, saying he liked representing the underdog. Even so, he was not greatly liked by many solicitors with whom he dealt, some of whom felt that he saw a libel where none existed, and used his reputation to force a payment on his terms.
No lawyer can have a 100 per cent record, and two of what were seen as Carter-Ruck's more celebrated defeats - celebrated by his detractors - were the actions brought in 1992 by the journalist Jani Allen over Channel 4 allegations of an affair with the South African neo-Nazi Eugene Terre Blanche, and the Palestinian Mona Bauwens, over stories of a holiday with the British Conservative politician David Mellor.
Carter-Ruck's style had its roots in his childhood. The son of a real estate agent, whose firm Ruck & Ruck still exists, he grew up in a household where his father kept discipline along Victorian lines. He was educated at St Edward's School, Oxford, where beatings were part of the curriculum, and every day started at 6.30 a.m. with a cold shower.
Instead of taking a degree after leaving school, he served five years' articles before qualifying as a lawyer in 1937.
During the war, he served in the Royal Artillery as a captain instructor in gunnery, which he thoroughly enjoyed, returning in 1944 to the firm of Oswald Hickson and Collier. He built the firm up but left in 1981, after losing a bitter power struggle. His new firm, Peter Carter-Ruck and Partners, had offices in the same building.
Carter-Ruck's daughter, Julie Scott-Bayfield, a successful libel lawyer in her own right, went with him, but then left in circumstances which, perhaps understandably, neither were willing to discuss. In 1999, he left the firm following a dispute over consultancy fees and the appointment of new partners. There followed a costly legal dispute; but at the time of his death, he was actively involved again with the firm.
His first victory as a libel lawyer had come in 1948, when he acted for a provincial newspaper editor in an action brought by the Liverpudlian Labour MP Bessie Braddock, who claimed it had been libellous to say she had danced a jig on the floor of the House of Commons. For some years, he acted for the Daily Express, and his proud claim was he never paid more than £2,000 as a single settlement.
There were signs of judicial dissatisfaction with the high level of Carter-Ruck's fees. In an action brought by the American tycoon Victor Kiam in 1999, a bill of nearly £20,000 was submitted for a half-day hearing. The solicitors acting for the newspaper involved charged a mere £7,000, but Carter-Ruck regarded his fees - of some £250 an hour - as modest compared with the fees some other city solicitors charged.
When, in 1988, the journalist Derek Jameson sued the BBC over a radio programme and lost, he found himself with £75,000 costs to pay, including a legal bill of £24,000. He also found, to his anger, counsel's opinion advising that his was a high-risk case. Carter-Ruck had not shown him the opinion because he had not wanted to undermine Jameson's confidence.
Carter-Ruck was, however, well ahead of his time when, in 1989, he recommended that the court of appeal should have the right to vary libel damages.
Money earned was to be spent. When he bought his first car, at a cost of £49, it left £1 in his bank account. Its successors included a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow and a BMW, both at the same time. A member of Lloyds, to his cost he declined his wife's suggestion to resign as a name two years before he did. A fair amount of money went on his succession of yachts, each called Fair Judgement.
Usually though, money was to be spent carefully. He was sued when he declined to pay the full amount of the caterers' bill for his daughter's wedding because, he claimed, too much champagne had been poured.
Carter-Ruck resigned from the Conservative Party because of what he saw as its failure to deal with law and order; he believed that the reintroduction of short periods of hard labour might be a solution to overcrowded prisons and idle prisoners.
Given his work on behalf of a long list of Tory politicians, perhaps he had hoped to receive an honour. On at least one occasion he pointed out that Arnold Goodman, Sam Silkin and Victor Mishcon, all lawyers with Labour connections, had been ennobled.
Always impeccably groomed, Carter-Ruck was a man of eclectic interests, including dowsing. Among his favourite composers were Bizet and Cole Porter, and his favourite films included Double Indemnity and Casablanca. A former commodore of the Law Society's Yacht Club, with its emblem of a shark, he raced for some 30 years, including four Fastnets.
His publications included the fifth edition of the textbook Gatley on Libel and Slander, as well as one on copyright. His own Memoirs of a Libel Lawyer appeared in 1990.
He is survived by his daughter, with whom he had long been reconciled. His wife, Pamela Ann, whom he married in 1940, died last month, and his son Brian died in an accident in 1957.
Peter Frederick Carter-Ruck: born February 26th, 1914; died December 19th, 2003.