A High Court judge is being investigated by the judicial watchdog after hijacking a hearing in a £3 billion case to rant about his lost luggage.

Mr Justice Peter Smith was asked by British Airways to recuse himself from a long-running competition case concerning accusations that the airline colluded to fix cargo prices. BA made the application for the judge to step down after he disclosed that he was engaged in a personal dispute with it. He claims BA failed to load his luggage onto his flight home from a holiday in Florence.

A leaked transcript of the recusal hearing (in full below) reveals the extent of the judge's obsession with his flight from hell. After briefly addressing some administrative points, Peter Smith J asks BA's counsel Jon Turner QC, "Right, Mr Turner, here is a question for you. What happened to [the] luggage?" Turner responds that his client doesn't want to get involved in the lost luggage at the hearing. Peter Smith J replies, "I am asking you: what has happened to the luggage?" Turner reiterates his preference to stick to the topic of the recusal. The judge replies, "In that case, do you want me to order your chief executive to appear before me today?"

"Yes, yes, calm and love. Where's my sodding luggage?"

The judge raised the issue of his lost luggage over 40 times in his tantrum, which encompassed:

1. His suspicions

• "Once again, the pilot has to know the weight of the plane. He has to approve the calculations for fuel. It is impossible for the pilot to take off without knowing that the passengers' luggage is being left behind."

• "I read all my Biggles books, but I just do not, to my limited knowledge, know how this can happen accidentally."

• "Just engage your brain, Mr Turner, and tell me how you can think how it can be possible that a plane can take off and accidentally leave the entirety of the passengers' luggage behind?"

• "They might have left the door open and it might have fallen off in pieces as it was taking off, I suppose"

• "Your client knows what happened to the luggage."

• "They have the answer. They know the answer."

 

2. BA's customer service experience

• "Apparently [BA's chairman] likes reading customers' emails. It doesn't appear to be necessarily he does anything about it, but he obviously likes reading them over his breakfast".

3. The incompetence of the Court of Appeal

• "I have plenty of regrets about the way in which the Court of Appeal went about their decision [to remove Justice Smith from another case], but, like you I suspect, we are no longer surprised by what happens in the Court of Appeal."

 

4. Self Pity

• "I am the victim."

• "It is personal. You have personalised this".

• "You wrote to the Chancellor and, in effect, suggested that any judge should be appointed to do this case apart from me."

• "What about the stay for remediation? I am not even competent to do that, am I?"

5. Foreigners

• "In the traditional Italian way, the fire engine arrived after the refuelling had been completed"

 

6. A possible explanation

• "I pointed out that my medicines were also in my suitcase"

 

Peter Smith J subsequently gave a judgment confirming his recusal in which he denied that he was biased, but also banged on about his luggage again. Recalling once more how he and his wife landed at Gatwick and "hung around baggage reclaim", he accused Slaughter and May, BA's lawyers, of adopting "a three wise monkeys" approach to the location of his khaki shorts and selfie stick, "Which I found, frankly, astonishing".

He is now being investigated by the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office.

Emerald Supplies Ltd v British Airways by Blank