Following a property sale by a real estate, the seller considered it to be unsatisfactory, and that the home was sold for less than its true value. he began a campaign of abusive threats and defamatory allegations towards the real estate agent, including attending public viewings of properties for sale conducted by the real estate, erecting protest signage at these viewings and hindering the access of prospective buyers. The real estate applied for an injunction restraining him from continuing this conduct.
At the hearings leading up to Yap v Matic [2022] WASC 181, the defendant contended he was a “living man” and not a “person”, taking offence to his name being written in all capital letters claiming it was not him, stating he was a “beneficiary of the Sandi Matic trust”, he did not consent to be governed, and generally disputed that the injunction did not apply to him, but to his “strawman”. Further, he did not accept the court’s jurisdiction and characterised the process as a “charade”.
He had sent a number of emails to the court which Solomon J reproduced in full in the judgement. Much of the decision centres around his OPCA belief that a person and a human are two separate entities. Solomon J held that such a distinction is neither recognised by the law nor suggested by rational observation, that they are one and the same thing, not two separate identities or entities, that someone who is alive has legal status as a person, and that Mr Matic, as a “person” or as a “living breathing man”, capitalised or in lower case, is subject to the court’s jurisdiction and required to comply with its orders.