Nannies

From Harman J in Swedac v. Magnet & Southerns [1989] 1 F.S.R. 243

The man who makes a better mousetrap, leading to people beating a path to his door to buy it, will inevitably damage the business of the makers of the earlier, worse mousetraps; they will, perhaps sadly, go out of business unless they are backed; but that is what competition is about; and that is what has been the driving force for the success of the capitalist world. It is an absolutely fundamental proposition, in my view, which Mr. Hobbs was right to emphasise, that this alleged tort really amounts to saying that there has been competition, and adding the old nursery cry ‘It’s unfair!’ To that I would only cite my nanny’s great nursery proposition: ‘The world is a very unfair place and the sooner you get to know it the better.’ In my view, unfair competition is not a description of a wrong known to the law. Competition that causes some loss may also be unfair because it breaks existing legal rights, but competition which is effective is not thereby unfair.

Sir Jeremiah LeRoy Harman (aka Harman the Horrible) was the brilliant and notoriously rude UK judge who attracted attention for a 20 month delay in delivering a judgment and for kicking a taxi driver (reportedly in the groin) under the misapprehension that the driver was a journalist