High Court judge: ‘Fake law’ cases should not be tolerated

The courts should stop tolerating "anarchic" and "fake law" litigation being advanced by pressure groups and dubious unqualified advisers to personal litigants, a High Court judge has said.

Mr Justice Seamus Noonan said a couple who advanced an "overwhelming miasma of fake law" in a failed bid to prevent a bank getting judgment were typical of a category of litigant representing a "very serious" challenge to a courts system overburdened with a rising number of "genuine" cases.

He said this approach to litigation was “much more serious” than just a form of “legal quackery” and was a “deliberate and conscious” waste of court time.

The judge said the time is “well past” when the courts should tolerate this “anarchic attempt to frustrate and obstruct the administration of justice”.

The judge made the comments when finding that James and Valerie Martin, Ellistown, Kildare, Co Kildare, had advanced no arguable defence to Bank of Ireland Mortgage Bank's proceedings against them for judgment for some €90,155.

He said that since the economic collapse, there had been a “sea change” in the prevalence of personal litigants, assisted by “agenda-driven pressure groups” and non-lawyers, known as “McKenzie friends”, providing advice for reward.

‘Detrimental’

His experience was those groups and individuals cause “significant harm” to those they purport to assist by giving advice “not just wrong but entirely detrimental” to the litigant’s interests.

By raising many “irrelevant, incoherent and nonsensical pseudo-legal points”, defendants vastly increase the costs of the litigation to their own detriment. They also ran the risk any good point they had would get lost in the “quagmire of mantra like incantation that bears only a passing resemblance to understandable English”.

Mr Justice Noonan said that throughout the “overwhelming miasma of fake law” advanced in sworn statements of Mr Martin, not once did Mr Martin deny the money was loaned and not repaid, he said.

Instead, “metaphysical concepts” were introduced to suggest the money “never actually existed”, although how the couple bought a property with “non-existent” funds was not explained.

The bank advanced the couple a €95,000 mortgage in 2005, secured on their property, the couple defaulted on payments due and appeared to have ceased all payments since August 2012, he said.

Repayment

In 2014, the bank demanded repayment of the entire sum due and later appointed a receiver who sold the property. It sought judgment for €90,155 outstanding after the sale proceeds were applied to the debt.

In opposing the bank’s case, there was no sworn statement from Ms Martin but Mr Martin swore a number of lengthy statements, the judge said. Those proclaimed he is a “non-individual living man”, involved “extraordinarily prolix and obtuse” statements and were clearly drafted by another person.

Mr Martin’s son Seamus had made several attempts to act as a McKenzie friend for his parents but the president of the High Court had ordered he was not entitled to be heard on foot of a power of attorney or otherwise, the judge noted.

James Martin’s affidavits were “suffused” with “frivolous”, “vexatious” and “plainly scandalous” material, including baseless allegations against officers of the bank and their lawyers, he said.

There were “contemptuous” references to this “alleged court”, it was sought to have any judge with shares or loans in any major bank to withdraw from hearing the case and it was also sought to rely on the Magna Carta.