After returns on investments in a Ponzi scheme, in K Sheridan v Colin Biggers & Paisley [2019] NSWSC 528 the Plaintiff filed a Statement of Claim in the Common Law Division, bringing a claim for $75 million against Colin Biggers & Paisley Pty Ltd and Grant Thornton Australia Ltd.
“The reference to “i, a man” in the Plaintiff’s Statement of Claim and other documents which he seeks to file, to which I refer below, appears to have something in common origin with the references to a “flesh and blood man”, noted to have many variations, in Meads v Meads [2012] ABQB 571, where the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta, Canada, undertook a comprehensive review of the characteristic features of what it described as “organized pseudolegal commercial argument”. That decision has in turn been noted by the High Court of New Zealand in Meenken v Family Court at Masterton [2017] NZHC 2103 and in decisions of the Federal Circuit Court of Australia, including Ennis v Credit Union Australia [2016] FCCA 1705, Deputy Commissioner of Taxation v Woods [2018] FCCA 1815 and Lion Finance Pty Ltd v Johnston [2018] FCCA 2745, with reference to a class of arguments deployed by self-represented creditors in a different context, in order to seek to avoid payment of debts: see also T Bloy, “Pseudolaw and Debt Enforcement” [2013] NZLJ 47.”
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In K Sheridan v Colin Biggers & Paisley [2019] NSWSC 621 it was ordered that the Plaintiff pay the Defendants’ costs of the proceedings on an indemnity basis fixed in specified gross sum and that the Plaintiff be restrained from commencing certain proceedings against the First or Second Defendant without leave or without satisfying the costs order.
“I should address a preliminary question, whether I should disqualify myself from hearing the questions as to costs and the further relief sought by the Defendants and addressed in this judgment. That question arises because, in his submissions in the earlier hearing, the Plaintiff asserted the existence of a “commercial lien” in the amount of $300 million against the Defendants, the Supreme Court of New South Wales and several other persons, including me as trial judge, and also tendered a document described as an “International Public Notice” of a “Common Law Commercial Lien” extending not only to the Defendants but also the Court and others. The Plaintiff also referred at the hearing and in the email to my Associate quoted above to the commencement of proceedings in “Her Majestys Federal Court”.
Second, a unilateral attempt to create a liability of $300 million owed by the Court or a trial judge to the Plaintiff, where their only dealing with him is the performance of the Court’s functions, has no prospects of success, inter alia, for the reasons noted by the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta, Canada, in Meads v Meads [2012] ABQB 571 at [447], to which I referred in the Principal Judgment (at [30]). The assertion of a financial liability against the Court or a trial judge which has no proper basis, or a threat of any consequential proceedings which would likely also be struck out, does not create actual bias.”
Click to access k-sheridan-v-colin-biggers-paisley-2019-nswsc-621.pdf
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