Judge Pearlman, 62, resorted to the Internet after she fractured her leg

last March in a fall. With a trial already underway at London's Southwark

Crown Court, she had an operation to have a metal plate inserted to support
the damaged bone. Six weeks later, the trial resumed with Judge Pearlman
using walking sticks to get around the courtroom. All went well for three
weeks until the plate snapped and it was revealed that the fracture had not
healed. With her summing up of the case 75 per cent completed, the judge,
who had been taken to St Bartholomew's Hospital, was determined not to
have to order a retrial.
And so it was. With just an hour's notice the jury was taken to St
Bartholomew's and settled into the makeshift courtroom in the 30ft-high,
oak-panelled splendour of the great hall. Then, from the questionable
comfort of an NHS wheelchair, the judge spent the next two days summing
up. "Unfortunately, yesterday I stepped into the family car ... but when it
came to getting out, I could not step on my bad leg," she explained to the
jurors.
Afterwards, the jury returned to Southwark to spend some 55 hours
considering their verdict in the case, which lasted six months.Meanwhile,
Judge Pearlman was transferred to a hospital near Worthing, West Sussex,
for surgery on her leg.
As she recovered, she used a specially installed pounds 2,500 two-way
Internet video link to follow the trial's progress, and answer the jury's
questions.
Almost a dozen times the link flickered to life to reveal the judge, in a pink
and purple patterned dress, sitting on the end of a slightly rumpled bed.
Judge Pearlman's commitment to law and order was revealed yesterday at
the conclusion of the trial when restrictions banning the reporting of the
unusual arrangements were lifted.
Three people - Gian Lombardi, 50, his wife, Veronica, 28, from west London
and Gianfranco Udovicich, 50, from central London, were found guilty of
conspiracy to defraud between January 1994 and September 1996. A fourth
defendant was acquitted.
The court had been told that the gang used plush offices and a facade of
respectability to lure people into non-existent investment schemes. Judge
Pearlman will deliver the sentences when she has recovered sufficiently to
be brought to court in a wheelchair.