Johnny Depp’s action against The Sun had been billed as the libel trial of the century. But in a 129-page judgment that devastated the actor’s so-called ‘army’ of fans, Mr Justice Nicol threw out Depp’s claim and found that The Sun had proved the bulk of its allegations to show that he had beaten his ex-wife, the actress Amber Heard.
Two years later, in 2022, Depp brought a fresh defamation claim before a jury in a Virginia court and won. The US verdict, based on slightly different legal issues, in hindsight aroused much (often misplaced) criticism of Nicol. But his ruling was upheld by the Court of Appeal which found the defamation hearing had been ‘full and fair’ — and that Nicol’s reasons had not, even arguably, been ‘vitiated by any error of approach or mistake of law’.
Nicol typically had been careful, methodical and thorough in assessing the mass of evidence over three weeks. Nor was he the kind of judge to be affected by the drama or publicity of the trial. His wife, Camilla Palmer KC, incurred some online flak over the Depp judgment, with fans blaming her feminism for having influenced her husband’s decision. The family did leave London for a short while to avoid the media intrusion. ‘I was slightly worried,’ she recalled, ‘but he [her husband] took it in his stride.’
Mark Stephens, a leading media lawyer and commentator, said: ‘Andrew’s judgment in this case demonstrated the qualities that defined him throughout his career: meticulous analysis, intellectual courage and reasoning so careful that the Court of Appeal could find no basis on which to disturb it.’
He added: ‘Andrew’s great strength was that he was never distracted by theatre. He looked at evidence, logic and principle. That made his judgments exceptionally difficult to challenge and exceptionally easy to trust.’
By the time Nicol reached the High Court bench in 2009, he had established a reputation as an outstanding media and civil liberties barrister, co-writing the standard textbook Media Law with Geoffrey Robertson KC — which, lawyers attest, was not just a description of the law but stated what it should be. Originally a slim volume nicknamed the journalists’ toothbrush (they went armed with it to court when facing the possibility of jail), it now runs to 1,000 pages.
Nicol was a law lecturer before full-time practice at the Bar and, modest and academic, he was always embarrassed, once on the bench, to have his textbook cited by counsel in his court.
It did, however, on one occasion come back to haunt him. He imposed a blanket secrecy order when hearing a terrorist trial involving a law student, Erol Incedal, in late 2014 and early 2015, leading to press accusations of hypocrisy, as his book stated that a trial derived its legitimacy from being held in public. That particular chapter, ironically, had been written by his co-author, Robertson. The Court of Appeal subsequently imposed a compromise whereby some of the proceedings were open, some in secret and some under reporting restrictions.
Andrew George Lindsay Nicol was born in 1951 to Duncan Nicol, a gas engineer and Margaret Nicol (née Mason), one of the first women to qualify as a physiotherapist. He had a younger sister, Fiona, who now lives in the United States.
He went to City of London Freeman’s School then to Selwyn College, Cambridge, to read law, where he rowed for his college. He was awarded a Harkness Scholarship which took him to Harvard and Berkeley. This was followed by a year working for the government of California, where he helped to pass some of the first legislation providing state funding for low-income housing, with the mayor of Sacramento awarding him the keys to the city in gratitude.
After a period working for a commercial law firm in Sydney, he returned to London and was Called to the Bar by Middle Temple in 1978. He had a leaning to academia and from 1977 to 1987 lectured at the London School of Economics. During that time, he was taken on as a pupil by Geoffrey Robertson, then at Dr Johnson’s Buildings, where Nicol’s initiation into practice was the ABC Official Secrets Act trial, and he would dash between libraries to find authorities against jury vetting: it emerged during the trial that this practice had been secretly introduced by the then attorney-general, Sam Silkin.
Nicol was taken on as a tenant at the set, headed by Emlyn (Lord) Hooson QC — where its strong civil liberties reputation fitted with Nicol’s commitment to social justice. In 1990 Robertson formed a break-away set, Doughty Street Chambers, outside the precincts of the Inns of Court and along with Keir Starmer, Nicol became a founding member and for many years acted as the chambers’ treasurer — having trained as a commercial lawyer. That kept the set on a sound footing, Robertson said, in contrast to rivals which struggled financially. Nicol stayed there until his elevation to the High Court Bench in 2009, heading both media and immigration teams.
He worked as a junior to Robertson on several key cases, including a challenge to magistrates’ anonymity and also the landmark ruling which introduced the abused wives’ defence to murder (Kiranjit Ahluwalia), where the pair argued that she should not be convicted of murder but of manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility. Robertson recalled: ‘He was a very good analytical lawyer and good on paper — very polite, quiet and unassuming; not perhaps a jury advocate, not a tub-thumping barrister.’
Nicol became a QC in 1995 and a deputy High Court judge in 2003. He retired from the High Court Bench aged 70 in 2021. He became a Bencher at Middle Temple in 2004. His judgments were highly regarded; and his approach was always strongly ethical. One KC said: ‘He was a bit of a stickler. He was firm and could be inflexible — he would not alter a court timetable just to suit people’s arrangements. But he was also very anti-old-fashioned pomposity. He turned up to a Circuit gathering in a sailing sweater rather than a suit, and they complained.’ A note went out to judges subsequently about being correctly dressed for dinner on Circuit.
Though Nicol was rarely overturned on appeal, he did once preside in the trial of the consultant surgeon David Sellu in November 2013 who was found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter after the death of a patient in his care. He served 15 months and on release appealed against conviction, succeeding on the basis that Nicol had not properly directed the jury as to the elements of the offence.
He met his wife through a mutual friend: Professor Jackie Fear-Segal, an academic in American studies; and for their first date took her to see Smithfield meat market followed by food at his favourite local greasy spoon. Palmer (she dislikes Lady) is a part-time employment judge specialising in mediation and an associate tenant at Doughty Street. Both their sons, Robert — an environmental and economic justice campaigner, and Jamie, a social entrepreneur selling ethical goods online — were given their mother’s name, with their father’s as a middle name: ‘It was explained to us in the context of thousands of years of male patriarchy,’ Robert recalled.
The family lived in north London but had a holiday home on the north Norfolk coast, where Nicol loved walking with his dog as well as sailing, insisting on being in charge as the fog came in — ‘not one to take advice in that situation’, a sailing companion observed. He also enjoyed storytelling, his son Robert recalled: ‘Often the tall tales of his father’s experience during the war.’
At work and with friends, Nicol was generous and supportive — helping many junior lawyers early in their careers and always prioritising time with family, who always took precedence over work. ‘He was always, for example, back for our dinner, even if he worked afterwards; didn’t work weekends and then took the summer off to be with the family,’ his son added. ‘All unusual for a barrister at that time.’
Towards the end of his life, the civil liberties solicitor and friend Jane Deighton reminded him of when he acted for Duwayne Brooks OBE, who was attacked when Stephen Lawrence was murdered. Nicol won Brooks compensation but crucially a key ruling to extend the scope of police liability to black victims of crime. Brooks went on to become a London councillor. Nicol managed to reply to Deighton: ‘It is good to have been effective.’
Always on the left politically, as a judge Nicol never displayed any political leanings. His focus was always the law and the facts. ‘Andrew was a lawyer’s lawyer,’ Mark Stephens said. ‘Exceptionally bright, utterly rigorous and possessed of a rare ability to see the point of principle buried beneath the noise of a case. He had no interest in fashionable causes. He was interested in justice. If there was an injustice to be corrected or principle to be defended, he was prepared to take it on.’
Obituary reproduced with kind permission from The Times.
