Sir David Cozens-Hardy Hirst (31 July 1925 – 31 December 2011) was an English barrister and judge who served as a Lord Justice of Appeal from 1992 to 1999. The Times described him as "one of the leading advocates of his generation".
Early life
Hirst was born in Meltham, the son of Thomas William Hirst and Margaret Joy ( Cozens-Hardy). His father was a cotton mill owner. His mother was a member of the Cozens-Hardy family of Norfolk; his maternal grandfather founded a firm of solicitors in Norwich, while his great-uncle was the politician and judge Herbert Cozens-Hardy, 1st Baron Cozens-Hardy, who served as Master of the Rolls from 1907 to 1918. and was posted to Singapore and then Burma before being demobilised in 1947 with the rank of captain. He then read history and law at Trinity College, Cambridge, before being called to the bar by Inner Temple in 1951. The following year, he won £5,000 in damages for Lord Russell of Liverpool against Private Eye, which called him "Lord Liver of Cesspool" and suggested he wrote a book about German war crimes to stimulate prurient interests. In 1967, he won an apology and "substantial damages" for the writer R.J. Minney against the historian M. R. D. Foot. Minney had written a biography of World War II heroine Violette Szabo, which detailed torture at the hands of the Gestapo, which Foot alleged were the products of author's "prurient imagination".
His most famous case as a QC was in 1970, when he represented retired Royal Navy captain Jack Broome against the controversial writer David Irving and Cassel Ltd in Broome v Cassell. Cassell had published a book by Irving blaming Broome for the destruction of World War II Arctic convoy PQ 17. The jury awarded Broome £40,000 in damages, the largest libel award made in England until Jeffrey Archer's libel suit against the Daily Star in 1987. The defendants appealed, but the House of Lords upheld the damages.
In the 1970s Hirst shifted to commercial work. He represented Paul McCartney in his 1971 lawsuit to dissolve the Beatles' legal partnership. He subsequently acted for all the Beatles in their lawsuit against their manager Allen Klein. He also acted for the Bee Gees. and received the customary knighthood the same year. He was assigned to the Queen's Bench Division and later sat in the Commercial Court. From 2000 to 2010 he chaired the Spoliation Advisory Panel, which advises the British government on claims for cultural property looted during the Nazi era.
Hirst died 31 December 2011 in London, after a long illness.
Family
Hirst met his wife, Pamela Elizabeth Molesworth Bevan, of Longstowe Hall, while at Cambridge. They married in 1951 and had three sons and two daughters. His son, Jonathan Hirst QC (1953–2017), was, like father, chairman of the Bar Council.