Frederick Mann - Judicial Career

Judicial Career

On 22 July 1919, Mann was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria. In 1931 he became the Chairman of the Court of Industrial Appeal and held that appointment until 1933. He was knighted in the King's Birthday Honours of June 1933, formally receiving his knighthood by Letters Patent on 12 July 1933. Between 1923 and 1934, he acted as Chief Justice of Victoria on many occasions. He was appointed Chief Justice in 1935 in succession to Sir William Irvine. In the same year he became president of the Melbourne Club. In 1936, he denounced Victorian police criminal investigation methods of the time as “crude, untrained and overly reliant upon informers and physical coercion”. Police at that time were tempted to obtain convictions through extorting confessions rather than through investigation. On 30 March 1936 he was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Victoria, taking office on 12 May 1936. The Melbourne newspaper “The Sun” described him as 'lucid, fearless, cold, crisp, alert, analytical, unostentatious and retiring … dignified and decorous'. Mann was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the Coronation Honours of 1937. In 1941 Mann heard the matter of Trustee's Executors & Agency Co Ltd v Reilly. In that case, he was called upon to decide what the phrase “in respect of” meant. He said:

“the words ‘in respect of’ are diffecult (sic) of definition, but they have the widest possible meaning of any expression intended to convey some connection or relation between the two subject matters to which the words refer”.

Mann’s dictum in that case on the definition of the meaning of the words “in respect of” is still used today.

Mann retired as chief justice in January 1944 and retired as lieutenant-governor in May 1945. In later years he became a trustee of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens Maud Gibson Trust. He died in 1958 at his home in the Melbourne suburb of South Yarra.