page_title: Albert Piddington
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Albert Piddington / Later life
caption_attribution_description: English: Australian politician Albert Piddington
context_page_description: Albert Bathurst Piddington KC was an Australian lawyer, politician and judge. He served on the High Court of Australia for one month in 1913, making him the shortest-serving judge in the court's history.
  Piddington was born in Bathurst, New South Wales. He studied classics at the University of Sydney, and later combined his legal studies with teaching at Sydney Boys High School. Piddington was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1895, representing the Free Trade Party. He was defeated after a single term, and subsequently returned to his legal practice, becoming one of Sydney's best-known barristers. Piddington was sympathetic to the labour movement, and in April 1913 Andrew Fisher nominated him to the High Court as part of a court-packing attempt. His appointment was severely criticised, and he resigned a month later without ever sitting on the bench. Later in 1913, Piddington was made the inaugural chairman of the Inter-State Commission, serving until 1920. He was appointed King's Counsel in 1913, and remained a public figure into his seventies.
context_section_description: In September 1913, Piddington was appointed as the chairman of the Interstate Commission by Joseph Cook, the new Commonwealth Liberal Party Prime Minister. It had been rumoured that Hughes would be appointed to that position, and it has been suggested that Cook appointed Piddington to spite Hughes, or to rebuke Hughes for turning on Piddington.  Nevertheless, he remained Chairman until the legislation under which he and the other two commissioners had been appointed was invalidated by the High Court. In 1919 he was made a Commissioner in both the Royal Commission on the Sugar Industry and the Royal Commission on the Basic Wage. In 1913 he was made a King's Counsel, and from 1926, he served as President of the Industrial Commission of New South Wales. He held that position until 1932, when following Governor of New South Wales Sir Philip Game's dismissal of the Lang government, Piddington resigned in protest, despite being just a few weeks short of being entitled to a pension.
  In 1934 he appeared in the High Court with Maurice Blackburn for Egon Kisch when he won his case to stay in Australia.
  In 1940, Piddington returned to the High Court as a plaintiff. Two years earlier, he had been seriously injured when struck by a motorcycle while crossing Phillip Street in Sydney;  he sued for negligence. Unsuccessful in the Supreme Court of New South Wales, he appealed to the High Court. Piddington won the appeal but was unsuccessful in the retrial in the Supreme Court.
  Piddington's memoirs, "Worshipful Masters" was published in 1929. Piddington died in Mosman on 5 June 1945.
caption: Piddington in 1927 after his appointment to the Industrial Commission of New South Wales
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