Ambulance-chasing lawyers strike again! Unlike the usual type, to all appearances they are helping doctors and nurses. Along they run, with their writs and their letters, calling out to the medics: “Did you know the PPE that you are wearing was procured in a process that has now been deemed ‘sufficient’ but still partially unlawful?” True modern heroes.

The so-called “Good Law” Project, brainchild of the lawyer and former “People’s Vote” campaigner Jolyon Maugham, appears to spend a large portion of its time digging through the flurry of contracts to supply personal protective equipment (PPE) handed out at the start of the pandemic, looking for places where the Government tripped up.

When it finds some potential fault, it takes everyone to court and spends thousands in crowd-funded donations on pursuing officials and private companies who were trying their best to keep our medics in gowns and masks during an emergency.

In its latest “victory”, the Good Law Project and a doctors’ campaign group called EveryDoctor managed to persuade a judge that one element of the way the Government awarded PPE contracts to two companies was unlawful. The process involved the use of a high-priority “VIP lane” for PPE suppliers that was accessed via referrals from senior civil servants. This was deemed unfair and, according to Mr Maugham’s minions, shows the Government using Covid as “an opportunity to enrich its associates”.

What these campaigners didn’t emphasise was that the judge rejected pretty much all of their other arguments. The VIP lane may have been a crude sorting mechanism intended to identify credible suppliers, but Justice O’Farrell found that it didn’t fundamentally compromise the process.

Indeed, she concluded that the contracts in question “justified priority treatment”, were awarded legally, that the Government had acted “reasonably”, carried out “sufficient due diligence” and “sufficient technical verification” and that even if the VIP lane hadn’t existed, “it is highly likely that the outcome would not be substantially different”. In other words, these do-gooder lawyers have dragged the reputations of two companies and a bunch of officials through the mud for 18 months and at the end of it secured a mild, ineffectual rebuke on a minor legal point that arguably affected no one and nothing.

What really stands out from the judgment is not the “irrefutable evidence of corruption” that Mr Maugham carps on about – and which has now, in fact, been refuted. What stands out is the incredible effort our officials invested in careful checks and fair process while trying to secure PPE against extraordinarily intense international competition in the midst of a pandemic.

It is hardly surprising that a few of the items they procured at short notice were dud. What should really surprise us is that among the £14   billion’s worth of PPE contracts handed out during this emergency, campaigners have managed to find a mere handful of cases that look dodgy and have failed even to convince a judge that they are right.

These court cases are the sorts of political attacks dressed up as legal probity that bog down decision-making and cripple the critical functions of government on a day-to-day basis.

No doubt Mr Maugham would be perfectly happy for our doctors to wear bin-bags to work so long as it meant he could feel righteous at parties and burnish his Twitter profile. Sometimes the law is an ass. In this case, it’s the lawyer.