Sydney Templeman, Baron Templeman

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Sydney William Templeman, Baron Templeman, MBE, PC, was a British judge.

He served as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary from 1982 to 1994 in the House of Lords and was additionally made a life peer as Baron Templeman, of White Lackington in the County of Somerset.

Lord Templeman was undoubtedly an enormously capable lawyer who contributed immensely to English law during his time as a judge, not only within his specialist field of intellectual property. Lord Templeman is perhaps well remembered for a slightly less celebrated aspect of his judicial career:

He is remembered as having been slightly unpleasant to counsel appearing before him (at the English bar, he came to be known by the nickname "Hissing Sid" or "Sid Vicious").

Lord Templeman has 2 sons, Peter and Michael (the latter a barrister), and one of his nephews, Anthony John Templeman, is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Western Australia.

English cases in which Lord Templeman gave speeches which fundamentally influenced the direction of English law include:

Street v Mountford [1985] AC 809
R v Brown [1994] 1 AC 212 (although the influence was short, and largely reversed (although not formally overruled) by R v Wilson [1996] 2 Cr App R 241)
Attorney General for Hong Kong v Reid [1994] 1 AC 324, [1994] 1 NZLR 1 (PC)
China and South Sea Bank v Tan [1990] 1 AC 536
He also gave a short speech in Spiliada v Cansulex [1987] AC 460