It is a question to excite the repressed student in every lawyer: which cases have most shaped British law over the past 200 years?

To celebrate the launch of The Times Archive, we asked Gary Slapper, Professor of Law, and director of the Centre for Law, at the Open University and long-time Times Law columnist, to trawl through more than two centuries of Times Law Reports (which, thanks to the Archive, you can now read as they originally appeared) and to pull out the 100 most important, influential and colourful cases since the newspaper began publishing in 1785.

The series will be presented in five parts over the next week, starting today. Everyone will have their favourites, from the Paisley snail to the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company: leave a comment if you disagree with any of our choices, or if you think we have missed any. Click on the case names to read the original law report as it appeared in The Times. Click here to go to the Archive and search for any article from the newspaper from 1785-1985.

Part one: 1785-1869 | Part two: 1870-1916 | Part three: 1917-1954 | Part Four: 1955-1971 | Part five: 1972-2006

The cases that changed Britain: 1955-1971

Part four of our pick of the 100 cases that have most shaped modern British law — including the original Times law reports

• The cases that changed Britain: 1917-1954

• The cases that changed Britain: 1870-1916

• The cases that changed Britain: 1785-1869

Related Links

• Times Law Reports: from bottled snails to cannibalism

• Times Archive has 200 years of legal drama

Davies v East
January 8, 1788

This decision was a classic early example of the courts holding someone to the terms of a commercial bargain over goods whose quality he had inspected and accepted. The action was in Westminster, the defendant a cabinet maker who had agreed to purchase 13 mahogany logs for £18. The seller argued that the wood should be paid for as agreed but the buyer said that the batch of logs was worthless, as it differed from some of the samples he had inspected. There were holes in it “so great that you might put your head into them”; according to one wood expert, it was the "worst he ever saw". But the verdict went in favour of the claimant, who was entitled to be paid the agreed price of £18 by the cabinet maker because the sale batch was, in general, the quality of wood he had agreed to buy.

Ormond v Payne
July 9, 1789

This colourful case involving a butcher and a prince’s coachman embodied the metropolitan bustle of the age; it was also notable in the development of personal injury actions. It concerned an ordinary man who was injured by a royal carriage. The claimant, George Ormond, was a butcher who lived in Turnham Green, West London. The defendant, Don Payne, looked after the affairs of the Prince of Wales at Carlton House. The butcher sued Payne after the Prince’s coachman, George Smith — for whom he was legally responsible under civil law — drove into the butcher’s cart, breaking his leg. The coachman, according to Ormond’s claim, was in a terrible hurry and “in liquor”. The moment the horses were harnessed and he had mounted the box, he had “called for a glass of gin, drank it, threw the glass violently upon the pavement, flogged his horses” and sped away at a gallop. The jury found that Payne was liable for the coachman’s actions and awarded £100 damages.

The King v Dodd
May 30, 1808

In the early 18th-century, investors poured money into the South Sea Company on the strengths of its hopes of a great trade with South America. In 1720 it collapsed. Many other companies failed around the same time, and joint stock organisations — whereby a company's capital comes from shareholders — were discredited and eventually banned under the so-called "Bubble Act". In 1808 the Act was used controversially against a businessman named Dodd. He had published a couple of prospectuses hoping to raise £50,000 by issuing shares but Lord Ellenborough, the Lord Chief Justice, ruled that such a scheme was unlawful. He said he hoped others would not engage in similar “mischievous and illegal projects”. In other words, commercial activity in 1808 was restricted to unincorporated partnerships, under which each partner is liable for all the business. Companies as we know them did not really become popular until the Companies Act 1844.

R v Burdett
November 28, 1820

The defendant, Sir Francis Burdett, was charged with seditious libel after he wrote a letter containing strong expressions about the conduct of the Government in dispersing the "mutiny" at St Peter’s Fields in Manchester on August 16, 1819. The letter claimed that unarmed men and women had been “inhumanly cut down, maimed and killed by the King’s Troops”. On the direction of Mr Justice Best that the letter was a poisonous libel, the defendant was found guilty, fined £2,000 and sentenced to three month’s imprisonment. It was upheld on appeal.

Explore Law

• Corporate Law

• Public Law

• Columnists

• Law Panel

• Student Law

• Law Reports

Times Recommends

• Future Stars of the Bar 2008
• Lawyer of the Week: Julie Morris
• Charging suspects - why it's a job for prosecutors