APPOINTMENT OF A QUEEN'S BENCH MASTER - BARBARA JANET FONTAINE

12 May 2003 12:15 PM

The Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, has appointed Barbara Janet Fontaine to be a Queen's Bench Master with effect from 12 May 2003.

She is the first solicitor to be appointed a Queen's Bench Master since the creation of the modern Masters in the Common Law Courts in 1838 and the first woman to be a Master of the Supreme Court.

Master Fontaine takes her judicial oath and her oath of allegiance today as a Master of the Supreme Court in the Queen's Bench Division before Mr Justice Buckley.

Notes for Editors

Ms Fontaine (49) was admitted as a solicitor in September 1978. She has been a deputy Queen's Bench Master since September 1997.

Queen's Bench Masters are procedural judges at first instance in the High Court and hear much of the heavy civil and commercial work in the Queen's Bench Division.

The Queen's Bench Masters are part of a long line of Common Law Masters whose origins lay in the Magistrae or Masters of the Duchy of Normandy Court founded in Rouen in 891 AD - the Scaccarium - which became the Court of Exchequer after the Norman Conquest in 1066.