Misleading cases

Computer says ‘divorced’ — but are they?

A judgment delivered yesterday had a title that was surreal enough to have intrigued even the busiest of reporters:

The ruling would not have looked out of place in a collection — such as this one¹ — of A P Herbert’s Misleading Cases:

Why had Shabana Mahmood taken 79 divorced couples to court? And why were none of them there? As Sir Alan Herbert CH (1890-1971) had himself foreseen, the computer was accused of getting it wrong:²