"No further time, effort, emotion or money for lawyers should be spent on this dispute. I am unhappy that this is just one broadside in a continuing naval engagement which will stretch on until the crack of doom." He was even more unhappy when Lord Cardigan failed to appear for the second time to give evidence.Mr Smith, an art agent, wants the court to declare that a right of way does exist from his home, Keeper's Cottage, for about a mile to the main Marlborough road. Lord Cardigan wrote to him in 1998 telling him not to use the gravelled track. Mr Smith told the court he had never been sure of his legal position in using it but he had never been told he could not.Asked by Thomas Seymour, representing Lord Cardigan, whether he thought he was entitled to use it, Mr Smith replied: "Lord Cardigan and I lived quite close to one another and I hoped we could come to a mutual understanding and repair our somewhat bruised relationship and prevent it deteriorating still further." He said he had bought the cottage from Lord Cardigan's father, Lord Ailesbury, with whom he had had a good relationship. "Lord Ailesbury was a very tolerant man," he said.Mr Smith said he first met the current Earl in 1979.
"He was a little hostile because I was friendly with his father," he said. "He disapproved of his father's decision to buy and refurbish Avebury Manor and I was busy stocking it with antique furniture." He denied that Lord Cardigan and his grandmother, Lady Ailesbury, had indicated that he should not use the track before the letter banning him in 1998.The Earl has a record of altercations with his neighbours. Two weeks ago, in a stand-off with one who wanted to drive into the forest, he was injured when the neighbour drove into him after he blocked the road. He has twice been fined for firearms offences since 1996.When Mr Justice Pumfrey was told the Earl was unavailable yesterday he is believed to have been en route from the United States the judge said: "This is the second time there has been a no-show This is beginning to cause me some degree of concern. I expect to sit at 10.30am tomorrow in the settled expectation that the witness will be here. If the witness is not here, he will have to have a blindingly good explanation backed up to the hilt."The hearing continues.. A solicitor serving a life sentence for murdering her two baby sons yesterday succeeded in staving off a life ban from legal work.
A solicitor serving a life sentence for murdering her two baby sons yesterday succeeded in staving off a life ban from legal work. Sally Clark, 36, made an often emotional statement on video from prison for a disciplinary tribunal which decided to impose the lesser penalty of indefinite suspension. Her legal team said it was the first time someone convicted of such a serious crime had not been struck off.Clark has continued to protest her innocence for the murders of 11-week-old Christopher and eight-week-old Harry and in the video told of the "minute-by-minute torture of life imprisonment".Clark was given two life sentences in November 1999 for the murders 13 months apart at the family home in Wilmslow, Cheshire. She insisted that they were victims of sudden infant death syndrome.During the nine-minute video, Mrs Clark said she felt "utter despair and anguish" after the children died. "As if that were not bad enough, I was then arrested and eventually charged with having killed them.
