John Lawson Walton

Sir John Lawson Walton KC (4 August 1852 – 19 January 1908) was a British barrister and Liberal politician.

John Lawson Walton was the son of the Reverend John Walton MA, a Wesleyan missionary in Ceylon who later preached at Grahamstown in South Africa and who became President of the Wesleyan Conference for Great Britain in 1887 and was later President of the Wesleyan Conference for South Africa. His mother was Emma, the daughter of the Reverend Thomas Harris.

Walton was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Great Crosby and at London University where he matriculated but did not graduate.

In 1882 at Glasgow Cathedral he married Joanna Hedderwick, the daughter of Robert Hedderwick who founded the newspaper the Glasgow Citizen who was the son of Thomas Hedderwick, Liberal MP for Wick Burghs from 1896–1900. They had three sons and two daughters.

Walton, intending to become a barrister, joined the Inner Temple as a student on 2 November 1874. He was called to the bar in June 1877, having the previous year gained first prize in the common law examination. He was appointed Queen's Counsel on 4 February 1890, swearing the oath in the company of two other illustrious Liberals R B Haldane and H H Asquith. His early career was boosted by his close association with the Methodist Church in the West Riding of Yorkshire but he soon built up a large practice in London as well as on the circuit. He took part in many famous cases, most notably a victory in 1896 with a lawsuit brought against Dr William Smoult Playfair, a well-known London obstetrician, for libel and slander arising from Playfair's indiscretion concerning one of his medical cases. The £12,000 damages awarded against Playfair was at the time the largest sum awarded by a jury. Walton often appeared on behalf of trade unions, including in 1898 in the case of Allen v. Flood, a leading case in English law on intentionally inflicted economic loss.

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