James Richard Atkin, Baron Atkin, (28 November 1867 – 25 June 1944), commonly known as Dick Atkin, was an Australian-born British judge, who served as a lord of appeal in ordinary from 1928 until his death in 1944. He is especially remembered as the judge giving the leading judgement in the case of Donoghue v Stevenson in 1932, in which he established the modern law of negligence in the UK, and indirectly in most of the common law world. Early life and practice Atkin was the son of Robert Travers Atkin (1841–1872) and his wife, Mary Elizabeth née Ruck (1842–1920). Robert was from Kilgarriff, County Cork, Mary's father from Newington, Kent, and her mother from Merioneth, Wales. The couple married in 1864 and soon emigrated to Australia intending to take up sheep farming. However, little more than a year into their enterprise Robert was badly injured in a fall from a horse and the couple moved to Brisbane where Robert became a journalist and politician. He always thought of himself as a Queenslander, and was President of the London Welsh Trust from 1938 to 1944. James was born at Ellandale cottage, Tank Street, off North Quay, Brisbane, the eldest of three sons but in 1871, his mother brought him and his siblings back to her own mother's house, "Pantlludw" on the River Dovey in Wales. His father died in Brisbane in the following year. James was much influenced by his grandmother and acquired from her an egalitarian instinct and a distaste for sanctimonious posturing. His mother's sister, Amy, was the first wife of Francis Darwin, third son of Charles Darwin and his wife Emma: there is a thank-you letter extant to Charles Darwin from the eleven-year-old Dick. Atkin attended Friars School, Bangor, and Christ College, Brecon, and won a demyship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he read classics and literae humaniores, enjoying playing tennis in his leisure time. Atkin was called to the bar by Gray's Inn in 1891 and scoured the London law courts assessing the quality of the advocates so as to decide where to apply for pupillage. He was ultimately impressed by Thomas Scrutton and became his pupil, joining fellow pupils Frank MacKinnon, a future Lord Justice of Appeal, and Robert Wright, another future Law Lord. He took chambers at 3 Pump Court but, as did most beginning barristers at the time, struggled to find work. He