Doctor in Trouble: Anderson v Gorrie and the Extension of Judicial Immunity from Suit in the 1890s

This article explores the case of Anderson v Gorrie (1894) in which the Court of Appeal completed the immunity of judges from suit for actions whilst ostensibly sitting judicially and within their jurisdiction. They subsequently rejected an argument for an extension of the ambit of the decision in Dimes v Grand Junction Canal Company to judges sitting in a case in which they had an interest. The strength of the fortifications the judiciary had built around itself, erected on the bones of Anderson and others, must have been influenced by the concerns the judges felt – concerns with the influx of litigants in person, who sometimes pursued their cases all the way to the Lords, benefiting from the in forma pauperis procedure.