Peter Smith

Who is Peter Smith?

Sir Peter Winston Smith, styled The Hon Mr Justice Peter Smith, is a Judge of the High Court of Justice in England and Wales, appointed to that office on 15 April 2002 and assigned to the Chancery Division. His name is correctly abbreviated in English legal writing as "Peter Smith J," and not as "Smith J," because there are other senior judges also named Smith.

He has presided over several prominent cases, which including a suit between boxer Lennox Lewis and his promoter Panos Eliades, as well as a copyright case involving the novel The Da Vinci Code. In the latter case, he rejected a claim by authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail that Dan Brown had violated copyright by copying major themes from their work. More recently, Peter Smith J presided over a huge claim by the Attorney General of Zambia for recovery of the proceeds of fraud. He was also involved in the early stages of the £100m Chelsea Barracks development, before being replaced at the last minute before the case came to trial.

In 2008 he was reprimanded by the Lord Chief Justice for his misconduct in the "Addleshaw Goddard matter".