A panel of Court of Appeal judges has shamed a family judge for being "gratuitously rude" to a 13-year-old girl.

The Law Society Gazette reports that Dodds J told the child, who had made an application for a DNA test because she didn't believe her dad was her biological father, that he was "bitterly resentful" at having to spend his Saturday reading up on her case, which he described as "codswallop". Though the Legal Aid Agency had already agreed to foot the bill for the DNA test, Dodds told the girl that he was considering making an order for her to pay.

Dodds, who was formerly head of chambers at 15 Winckley Square, also mocked the girl's lawyers, asking whether they would have answered "yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full" if she had told them "that the moon was made of green cheese". Dodds went on to declare that "the lunatics" had "truly taken over the asylum", but said that just because the lunatics said they wanted something did "not mean that they should be spoon-fed".
 
Dodds prepped the girl for his dismissal of her application for a declaration of parentage by saying that she "might want to put her crash helmet on".

 
Who's your daddy


In their oral judgment a CoA panel comprising Lords Justice Aikens, Black and King gave Dodds a humiliating dressing-down. They said his "unrestrained and immoderate" language "had to be deplored" and represented a "serious procedural irregularity" and that Dodds' appointment to judgeship did not give him "licence to be gratuitously rude to those appearing before him". And, a bit like rubbing a dog's nose in its own mess, hoped that he would read the transcript of the hearing and "be embarrassed".

Allowing the girl's appeal against his decision, they ruled that Dodds' threat to make a costs order against a child showed that he'd gone into the case with a "closed mind", and had also failed to allow proper submissions. Presumably because that would have meant even more boring weekend reading.
 
Dodds got a fresh panning the next day when another of his decisions was overturned, this time for being "fundamentally unprincipled and unfair". The Appeal judge said that all parties in the case had "crumbled under the judge’s caustically expressed views", which sounds like perfect judging. His conduct is not being investigated as no complaints have been made.
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