Rising to sit as a judge in the House of Lords, he is best remembered for his unspectacular but efficient and courteous chairmanship of industrial inquiries and royal commissions.

His 1978 report into civil liability and compensation for personal injury made proposals for state pensions for accident victims that were largely rejected by government at the time.

He served with the 5th Battalion, Guards Machine Gun Regiment, at the end of the First World War in 1918, before going up to Balliol College, Oxford as a classical scholar and a Jenkyns exhibitioner.

Despite only a modest reputation as an advocate, he was appointed a Justice of the High Court (King's Bench Division) in 1951, receiving the customary knighthood.

[2] In 1958 Pearson chaired a committee to consider the rules for investment of funds paid into court to provide for, among others, widows and children who were awarded compensation.

[1] In 1960, Pearson was appointed President of the Restrictive Practices Court but in 1961 he was made a Lord Justice of Appeal and sworn to the Privy Council.

Winning increasing respect, on 18 February 1965, he was made a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, being created a life peer with the title Baron Pearson, of Minnedosa in Canada and of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

Pearson believed that tort's traditional role of compensation had become outdated with the rise of the welfare state since the end of World War II.