Yesterday, in a welcome pronouncement of common sense, the law lords ruled that Harry Goldstein had meant no harm when he played a whimsical jape on his old Jewish friend Abraham Ehrlich.

Mr Goldstein has suffered for his humour. Three years ago a jury at Southwark Crown Court found him guilty of causing a public nuisance. He was sentenced to 140 hours’ community punishment and ordered to pay £500 compensation and £1,850 prosecution costs.

Mr Goldstein appealed, but the Court of Appeal upheld his conviction. Now the highest court in the land has seen the nonsense of it.

Mr Goldstein, a kosher food merchant from Manchester, owed a sum of money to Mr Ehrlich, his wholesale supplier in London. Mr Ehrlich pressed Mr Goldstein for payment. The friends, the law lords were told, had “a bantering relationship”. What two Jewish traders don’t? In an ancient cultural gesture, Mr Goldstein wrote out a cheque to Mr Ehrlich, but into the envelope he sprinkled a small quantity of salt.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill, the senior law lord, explained yesterday: “This was done in recognition of the age of the debt, salt being commonly used to preserve kosher food, and by way of reference to the very serious anthrax scare in New York following the events of September 11, 2001, which both men had discussed on the telephone shortly before.”

Mr Ehrlich never got his cheque, or salt. The envelope got as far as Wembley sorting office, London, where the salt leaked on to the hands of a worker, who suspected it of being anthrax. Panic ensued. The sorting office was evacuated for an hour, the police were called and that day’s second delivery was cancelled.

At his original court hearing Mr Goldstein denied the common law offence of public nuisance. He had the backing of Mr Ehrlich, who said that he would have recognised the salt as a joke, had he received it.

Overturning the conviction yesterday, Lord Bingham said that Mr Goldstein had not intended to cause trouble. “Nor, plainly, was it a result which he knew would occur, since it would have rendered his intended joke entirely futile.”

Lord Bingham, sitting with Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood and Baroness Hale of Richmond, said that the old common law charge of public nuisance would probably be rarely used in future, as statutes now existed to deal with almost every public nuisance, be it noise, pollution, racial or religious harassment, or sending noxious substances in the post. The law lords also allowed an appeal by Anthony Rimmington, who had been convicted of public nuisance for posting packages of racially offensive material to members of the public. Lord Bingham said that the communications were strongly racist and in some instances threatening and arguably obscene. But the offence of public nuisance involved injury to a section of the public, and did not extend to individual letters.

HEARD THE ONE ABOUT ... ?

Rabbi Levy replies: “Sidney, that’s what video recorders are for.”

Sidney is surprised. “I can tape Kol Nidre?”

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