NZ Legal System – It’s Not Broken

Despite the injustice outworked by crooked legal eagles, the New Zealand Legal System is absolutely not broken. It is doing exactly what it is designed to do – dispense justice through – yup you got it – through the legal system. Occasionally it gets it right. Mostly though it protects its own. In this post I detail a few recent legal goings on around me and pass commentary on why and how ‘they’ do what ‘they’ do. Enjoy.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “I love lawyers. They’re so predictable!”

Lawyers!

I use different lawyers for different things, sometimes playing one off against another but my favourite lawyer laughs when I call him. I’ve yet to work out whether he’s laughing at me or with me, but I appreciate the efforts that he has gone to over the years to help me. “Why do you do it?” I once asked him. I’ve gotten back a gazillion answers to that one but he genuinely seems to want to help this fruitloop, so I’ve leaned on him from time to time. About a week or so ago I got an invoice from him for the money I had paid him a while back. It was only a few hundred dollars but it was all I had spare at the time. I sent it his way after he agreed to slap me up a document that I wanted to get right. How often do you tell your lawyer how much you can afford, you pay him in advance and then bugger me days he honours his word and bills you what you agreed? How can you not love a guy like that eh?

Smith v Ian Plowman

In 2018 I ended up suing a dude up in Kumeu over a commercial dispute. His name is Ian Plowman and he runs a nursery up there. To cut a long story short we did a deal to lease some land from him which turned sour. I found out later that he has an anger problem, probably has Asperger’s Syndrome to boot, and we crossed swords. It cost me quite a bit and it was a bit of “he said, I said!” sort of thing. So hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to court we go.

We finally got a hearing to see whether we have a case or not. This is called a Strike Out Application. Mr Plowman and his lawyer said, well the lease actually wasn’t, so therefore, no lease, no case to answer, bugger off Mr Smith. I say, hang on a minute, aren’t we supposed to hear the evidence in a court hearing first? Judge says, no lease, no case to answer, bugger off Mr Smith but takes three months to issue the judgment. The time to appeal a DC judgment is one month, so now I gotta apply for an extension of time AND appeal. In the meantime the idiot’s lawyer pushed through and insisted that she wanted security for costs and objected to the usual Fees Waivers designed for people like me – beneficiaries.

Powell J said, if you’ve got access to precious metals then you gotta pay the fees and over-rode the DR’s ruling. Campbell J said, I agree, and issued another ruling saying, “I agree and reassert my agreement what Powell J said, you gotta pay up or else it all gets struck down.” Spare me days! What I’d like to do now is show the how the lawyers and judges twist reality to feather their own nest. As far as I can work out and from what I see in a practical sense, a lawyer’s primary pledge is loyalty to the Bar, not to truth or justice. It is their job to first ensure that the legal system remains in tact, then to their client (therefore defending a known crook in court justifies deception), and if it brings about justice then so be it – that’s a bonus.

I’ll show you what I mean by this with a few examples from this recent case . . .

In Powell J’s summary of a teleconference he twisted my words in his ruling. Despite me saying FOUR times (yes four, I know, I counted them) that I did NOT have the money to pay the fees and once, very clearly that I had access to precious metals but that they were owned by a trust, the judge wrote down that he was confused, so Mr Smith had the funds and had to pay the fees. Believe me on this, nobody (I repeat, NOBODY) who heard that conversation (transcript) could possibly have gotten the wrong message. Four times I said clearly, I DO NOT have the funds available to pay the fees and once I explained that the previous metals were not mine but that they belonged to a trust.

Having written this up then this becomes a finding of fact which is then used by others as validation of their continued protecting of their own. This is how they do things to disadvantage those little guys who cannot afford or do not want to engage legal counsel. Yes it’s a racket, but it is one where plausible deniability is used to protect themselves. By rights Powell J should never have over-ruled the DR’s waving of court fees for a beneficiary. There was no reason that just because a family trust (a totally separate entity BTW) offered to provide security for costs by way of precious metals that a beneficiary could not have his Court Fees waived. None! The question I would ask of course is well under what circumstances would a Fees Waiver properly apply?

There are two issues I address here, one is the question of court fees, whether simply because I offered to provide security from a trust means that I can afford Court Fees. The second is the repeated support of Campbell J’s initial support. Simply repeating logical failures doesn’t make it right or just, especially when the summary relied upon contained bias!

My point is not so much to gripe about dopey biased High Court judges getting something wrong, a higher court can always address any grievance I have in that regard, it is that the we can see here the method by which injustice can creep in and perpetuate. There are heaps of other techniques that those in positions of authority use to validate themselves – threats of further criminal charges, bullying of victims, witnesses or suspects, preventing evidence from coming to trial (even suppressing it or planting or fabricating it) and letting it come out in private hearings are others. Plausible denial in which “I didn’t know!” also kicks in. In the Crewe murder trials of Arthur Allan Thomas all these techniques were (and I believe still are being) used to achieve a given objective. It matters not whether this is to protect the system, a reputation or for sexual, financial or political benefit in my book. Somebody will always end up paying for the injustice.

The Crewe ‘Cold Case’

I’ve already published an incredible document that shows dishonesty from a senior but now disgraced judge, “the pornography Judge” (Robert Fisher) in the Crewe murder inquiry. What alerts me to this is the response from well connected people more concerned with where the document “came out” from rather than whether the contents showed corruption at the highest levels. Likewise with what I see as the continued harassment of Arthur Allan Thomas. I don’t actually know the identities of the complainants but I do know that the Thomas family shows dysfunction typical of any large family and that while there are some who are “good guys” to think that there isn’t any “bad eggs” in there would be naive. Is this yet another case of greed and power games within a family with it (via some jealous gals) spilling over into the public realm? I think the identity of the complainants is suppressed. Hmm, I wonder if the word “sisters” could be used in here somewhere?

From what I see and suspect, if I were the Police, I think I would tread very carefully if I was to keep pushing this one out into the public arena just in order to get back at someone who shamed them all way back when or who got a large amount of money when they didn’t.

Crooked Cops

Your mission, should you choose to accept it is a to challenge try to find a place where you can make the biggest splash in the pool. You’re a crooked cop pretending to be cool protect and serve. You need to find someone innocent and then charge them with a crime of dishonesty. You can’t charge them with burglary or theft because they took something with the permission of the owner but you can tell them that you will. You have to find someone two years short of 65years who has never been charged before; someone who is a licensed private investigator; who has blogged more than a couple of million words and written three dozen books, most of it encouraging people to do the honourable thing; someone who is fearless to speak it like it is; who knows the law and obeys it . . . then develop a case without any evidence that he obtained by deception. Oh and throw in the fact that he’s also writing a book called “Crooked Cops – How to deal with Police corruption”.

Local Taumarunui policeman Sam Edwards seems to have managed to achieve this . . . smart man [sarcasm]. They say that fools rush in where angels fear to tread so I just can’t wait to see this fool try to present his case before 12 jurors up in Hamilton probably in 2022 sometime.

Defending

All things that have some form of life, have in-built defense systems. They must do to survive. Be this the immune system designed to cope with COVID-19 like threats, countries like NZ, the UK, or the USA who have defense forces or political parties with teams designed to use political techniques to protect their existence. The legal system, like the policing system and like any other system has defense mechanisms in place to protect itself. Hopefully this post has helped you to understand some of the ways that these work.

I’ve pinged Robert Fisher previously as have others but he is recognised as having and acute legal mind. Here he admits to exactly what I’m talking about:

Former judges usually want more arbitration and private mediation. Sitting judges usually prefer major trials of social, commercial or legal significance; few relish case management, interlocutory applications, and high volume trivia. Barristers are usually protective of their role as highly paid gladiators who control the procedural destiny of their own cases. Civil servants usually place the emphasis on throughput rather than quality. Most politicians want to reduce complex problems to populist sound-bites. Academics consider it their painful duty to rein in the dangerously wide freedoms arrogated to themselves by judges. And when was the last time the presenter of a conference paper made his or her mark by applauding the status quo? On a topic like this we are all hopelessly mired in selfinterest. All we can do is try to evaluate the idea rather than its source.

https://www.dennis.nz/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/08-Adversarial-Process1.pdf

How appropriate these observations are!

In another of Robert’s writings he summarises that using Demeanour can be a dangerous process:

Credibility assessment is central to the work of judges, juries, tribunals, arbitrators and other decision-makers. There are ample tools with which to make that judgment. If they are insufficient, there is always the onus of proof to fall back on.
Unfortunately the one source that cannot be usefully resorted to is demeanour. Judges and other fact-finders should keep this in mind when listening to evidence. Juries should be expressly warned about it. Appellate courts should change their approach to it.
Traditionally, the credibility of witnesses, and appellate standards of review, have been the province of judges rather than legislators. One hopes that the Courts will respond to developments in understanding demeanour. If they do not, Parliament may need to step in, as it has been obliged to do on other occasions when the Courts have dragged their feet.

https://www.dennis.nz/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/The-Demeanour-Fallacy.pdf

Having been on the tail end of some pretty dopey judicial rulings recently, I’d concur.

My approach is to tackle this BS full-on, and expose it when and where appropriate. IMHO Powell J got it wrong, despite me being ‘just’ a self-represented litigant. I may be a Director of a gazillion companies that controls millions in assets, or a trustee of a gazillion trusts but if the evidence shows what I claim (and it does) that I am entitled to a Fees Waiver due to my beneficiary status (which I have) then it doesn’t matter how high it has to go, and how many times Campbell J has to relook at it all, until it can be explained to me why (and how, too) I have to cough up something I do not have in order to get justice within the New Zealand legal system, then I will do the needful and keep on a-knock, knock, knocking!

The courts have been trying to work out who can or should look at this current dispute. The High Court wouldn’t look at it until I paid the fees. I haven’t because I can’t. The Court of Appeal has said that they couldn’t look at until the High Court gave them the authority to. The High Court Registrar has said, “Oops, maybe I was wrong, perhaps we better look at it again after all!” I’ll update this saga when I know the answer!

I’ve said many times that it is a happy day when justice and the legal system collide. You gotta have balls of steel and show huge bravery when you use the legal system to try to get justice eh wot?

Chin up all!