The former Court of Session and High Court judge Lord Caplan has died after a long illness at the age of 79.
Philip Isaac Caplan was one of the most prominent Jewish members of Scotland's judiciary.
Lord Caplan retired from the High Court bench in 2000 after 11 years' service in which he oversaw some of Scotland's most famous civil and criminal legal cas
es.
Born in Glasgow on February 24, 1929, he attended Eastwood School in Renfrewshire before studying law at Glasgow University.
He worked as a solicitor with Glasgow-based Alexander Stone between 1952 and 1956, and was called to the Bar in 1957.
From 1964-70, Lord Caplan was junior counsel to accountant of court before being appointed sheriff of Lothian and Borders in 1979.
From 1983-89 he served as sheriff principal of North Strathclyde and was the first sheriff to become a senator of the College of Justice in 1989. He was latterly a member of the inner house of the Court of Session.
He will be remembered by most as the judge who heard the litigation following the 1988 Piper Alpha disaster in which 167 people lost their lives. The case, which cost an estimated £10 million, took three and a half years in court, heard 13m words of evidence and resulted in an opinion over 1450 pages long. Lord Caplan ordered that the oil companies pay more than £100m in damages.
He was also famously branded "pompous" by Tommy Sheridan, the then Anti-Poll Tax Federation leader who would later become Scottish Socialist MSP and Solidarity leader, whom he jailed for contempt of court for six months in 1992.
Lord Caplan was a golfer and a keen collector of pictures. He read avidly and attended many musical events in and around Edinburgh. But his lifelong passion was photography.
He was a member of the Edinburgh Photographic Society and the Helensburgh Photographic Society, winning many medals at exhibitions. He acted as a judge at the Royal Photographic Society International Exhibition and exhibited at the Faculty of Advocates during several Edinburgh Festivals.
Recently, he gave a lecture at the National Galleries of Scotland in connection with a major photographic exhibition.
Douglas May, QC, who knew Lord Caplan professionally and as a fellow photographer, said: "Philip was a talented photographer whose pictures made one think – they could be described as 'abstract realism'. His photographs displayed a highly unusual use of colour, which may have been due to colour blindness. Philip's work was individual and always fascinating."
Lord Caplan had two sons and one daughter from his first marriage and a daughter with his second wife, Joyce, whom he married in 1974.
Lady Caplan said: "It was an honour to share his life. He was a man full of compassion and integrity and meticulously careful. He had an analytical brain that easily absorbed facts.
"Philip was a passionate photographer but also loved opera and was a fine pianist. He was urbane, kind-hearted and had tremendous energy."
Lord Caplan died in Edinburgh on Friday and there will be a private funeral service.
The full article contains 525 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
