William Robert Grove - Legal Career

Legal Career

From 1846 Grove started to reduce his scientific work in favour of his professional practice at the bar, his young family providing the financial motivation; and in 1853 became a QC. The bar provided him with the opportunity to combine his legal and scientific knowledge, in particular in patent law and in the unsuccessful defence of poisoner William Palmer in 1856. He was especially involved in the photography patent cases of Beard v. Egerton (1845–1849), on behalf of Egerton, and of Talbot v. Laroche (1854). In the latter case Grove appeared for William Fox Talbot in his unsuccessful attempt to assert his calotype patent.

Grove served on a Royal Commission on patent law and on the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers.

In 1871 he was made judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and was appointed to the Queen's Bench in 1880. He was to have presided at the Cornwall and Devon winter assizes of 1884, which would have entailed him trying the notorious survival cannibalism case of R v. Dudley and Stephens. However, at the last minute he was substituted by Baron Huddleston, possibly because Huddleston was seen as more reliable in ensuring the guilty verdict that the judiciary required. Grove did sit as one of five judges on the final determination of the case in the Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench.

Grove was a careful, painstaking and accurate judge, courageous and not afraid to assert an independent judicial opinion. However, he was fallible in patent cases, where he was prone to become over-interested in the technology in question and to be distracted by questioning the litigants as to potential improvements in their devices, even going so far as to suggest his own innovations. He retired from the bench in 1887. His portrait was painted by Helen Donald-Smith in the 1890s.