Patrick Gosling wrote:


One would be wrong to jump to that conclusion. That kind of assumption
would seem to me to precisely underline one of the kinds of problems
that lead to vexatious litigation.

That is, in some cases, litigants really _do_ wind up with a world view
that is completely out of kilter with reality. And you really _do_ need
a mechanism for managing them, such as the "vexatious litigant" system.

And it's a pretty mild restraint that is imposed, all things considered.


Just to underline this point, in Bhamjee, Mr Bhamjee started to sue all
the lawyers (in particular barristers) who appeared against him. One of
the things that influenced the court of appeal against him was that he
appeared to be trying to discover the addresses of his opponents'
barristers (who were representing other barristers sued by Mr Bhamjee)
in order to sue them as well.

That is as stupid as a football manager suing the other side's players
because they scored goals against him.

Obviously, in my profession, we get a lot of hostile litigation and
complaints against us. In any case that gets to trial one side at least
is likely to loose. They will be looking for someone to blame and we are
an obvious target. All litigants can't be right (at least 50% must be
wrong), but few are prepared to recognise that their own cases might
have any weaknesses.

Up to a point all of this is just a risk of the job, and we do have a
certain amount of insurance, but left to themselves the Mr Bhamjees of
this world would tie up all our time defending misconceived claims and
we would never be able to live our lives. The court system would also
waste a lot of its time and resources on such things.

Most normal litigants, even quite obsessive litigants in person, get
nowhere near to being vexatious. The line is quite hard to cross, you
have to be someone who really won't take anyone else's advice and won't
stop when advised to do so.

Francis Davey