1. WEIRD CASES
In 1689, the Bill of Rights declared that “cruel and unusual punishments” should not be
inflicted on citizens. That, though, was at a time when possible punishments included being
boiled to death and unspeakable mutilation with iron pliers. Standards change over time.
Today, an Austrian count who spent seven days in an English prison is alleging that his
human rights were violated when he was given an uncomfortable pair of underpants.
Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly lives in a palace in Austria and owns other properties including a
castle in Scotland and a home in Sloane Square, London. This is a man who is not
accustomed to compromising on the quality or comfort of his underpants.
His period of imprisonment came about as part of a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation
into a BAE Systems arms deal. The SFO investigation concerned allegations that Mensdorff-
Pouilly, a BAE agent, made illegal payments of about £10.53m to officials in order to win
contracts for BAE to deliver fighter jets to Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic. He was
charged with corruption offences for bribing state officials. Eventually, BAE Systems admitted
to criminal charges of corruption and agreed to pay £287m to the authorities.
After he was released, Mensdorff-Pouilly said that “In the UK human rights are not exactly
respected like they are in Austria.” In recounting the alleged human rights travesty, the count
said “I wasn’t given underwear that was my size, despite asking for it several times”.
Does the count have a valid complaint? Could a human rights case of ‘The Wrong Pants’
succeed? On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) adopted
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 5 says "No one shall be subjected to
torture or to cruel inhuman or de-grading treatment or punishment." On the minds of the
drafters, however, was the suffering of people in the Holocaust and the Second World War. It
seems unlikely that the UN would have been diverted for hours of debate if a delegate then
had asked “Yes, but legally does article 5 guarantee a suspect’s right to tailor-measured
underpants?”
A case of uncomfortable underpants, though, did once change the law. In 1931, Richard
Grant, a doctor in Adelaide, got an acute form of dermatitis from a pair of Golden Fleece
woollen underpants. These were, in fact, a shockingly bad pair of pants. He was incapacitated
for 17 weeks and had to go to New Zealand to recuperate. The dermatitis was caused by a
chemical irritant – free sulphites - that manufacturers had failed to remove during production.
Dr Grant’s sweat combined with the free sulphites to form, successively, sulphur dioxide, then
sulphurous acid and then sulphuric acid. He was allowed to win compensation for the latent
defect in the pants. He settled, though, for that compensation and didn’t take his case to the
League of Nations as an alleged affront to human dignity.
Gary Slapper is Professor of Law at The Open University. His new book Weird Cases is
published by Wildy, Simmonds & Hill.
These articles were published by The Times Online as part of the weekly column written by
Gary Slapper