Name George Giffard | ||
SIr George Markham Giffard (4 November 1813 – 13 July 1870) was an English barrister and judge.
Life
The fourth son of Admiral John Giffard, and Susannah, daughter of Sir John Carter, he was born at his father's official residence, in Portsmouth dockyard, on 4 November 1813. He was educated at Winchester College and at New College, Oxford, where he was elected to a fellowship in 1832 and took the degree of BCL on 4 March 1841.
Giffard entered the Inner Temple, of which he eventually became a bencher, and was called to the bar in November 1840. He obtained an equity practice, and was a leading chancery junior counsel. In 1859 he became a Queen's Counsel, and attached himself to the court of Vice-chancellor Sir William Page Wood.
When Vice-Chancellor Wood in March 1868 became a Lord Justice of Appeal, Giffard succeeded him; and was again his successor on his promotion from the Court of Appeal as Lord Chancellor, when he also became a member of the Privy Council. After an extended illness, he died at his house, 4 Prince's Gardens, Hyde Park, London. In 1853 he married Maria, second daughter of Charles Pilgrim of Kingsfield, Southampton.
As a judge he is probably most famous for handing down the decision in In re Panama, New Zealand, and Australian Royal Mail Co (1870) 5 Ch App 318, generally regarded as the first case in English law to recognise the floating charge.