Filing a Libel action.

The Courts system and Court forms don't work the way you think they do, and
the words used don't mean what you think they do. For example, 5EX90059
against the three individual defendants was thrown out as an "abuse of
process". What this means is that Courts have a way of working, a Standard
Operating Procedure if you like, and if you stray too far outside of their
SOP, you get canned as an abuse of process.

5EX00597 was not an abuse of process, because the whole case fit into a
cardboard A4 folder, 5EX90059 was, because you need a fork lift truck to
move all the paperwork.

There were two basic areas where I strayed outside the SOP.

1.. Verbiage, the Courts don't want it, basically if the case can be pared
down and made more concise it must be, even if this means excluding facts,
you must cut it down to the absolute bare minimum. The time to put flesh on
the bones is at the hearing, not in pre-trial correspondence. This is a REAL
problem if you wish to express yourself to the Court, you must choose one
path or the other, and hope that if you choose the path I did the Court will
give you leave to file again, after you have gotten everything off your
chest. I was lucky, it worked for me, caveat emptor.

2.. Quantity, I was faced with 3 individual Defendants who between them
had posted literally tens of thousands of libellous, defamatory, untrue,
harassing, abusive and threatening publications. Despite this, the correct
course of action is to limit yourself to between one and three publications
per defendant. Keep it concise.
In 5EX90059 if we went to court with EVERYTHING that the defendants had
published, we would have had a trial that lasted maybe a year. When you
consider that there are only about 60 Libel actions in the entire UK each
year, you will see that this is excessive, especially where one private
individual is suing another private individual.

Judges are not stupid, they are very very very clever, and the Law is what
they do, they do not need any more than 1 to 3 sample publications, nor does
a Jury, and this means the entire case can be heard in a day, or less. One
day versus several weeks or months, which is a waste of resources, this is
where abuse of process comes in.

So, points to watch;

a.. There is no Legal Aid for defamation actions.
b.. Keep it as short and concise as humanly possible.
c.. Watch out for opponents trying to push you into an abuse of process.
d.. The instant you file, stop interacting with your opponents, if this
means quitting Usenet for the duration, so be it.
e.. Accept that you opponents will use every means at their disposal,
including trolling you and impersonating you, in every group or forum that
you have ever used.
f.. Accept that each case can take a year from filing to come to trial.
g.. Most of all, do things in the correct order, the ONE mistake I made in
5EX90059 was putting the cart before the horse and attempting to sue for
libel without first disarming my opponents by silencing them... this will
not happen in the re-run.
Most important of all, know yourself. I took a huge chance in 5EX90059 by
using it as a soap box and an opportunity to tell the Judges what it feels
like to be the target of such behaviour. I did it because I'm that kinda
person, I don't go quietly into the night etc. I wanted to make sure that as
many people as possible within the system had a fly-on-the-wall view of what
it is like, because these are the people that make future policy and set
legal precedents. I achieved that, and I was enormously fortunate that four
separate High Court Judges all took the view that I should be allowed to
proceed against these individuals.

Knowing myself and having gotten what I wanted to off my chest, I am now at
liberty to proceed. We have established IN LAW that no ISP or Service
Provider is ever going to be responsible for what their customers do, ergo
no customer can now hide behind their ISP as an avenue of defence.

From here, having established that the customer cannot hide behind the ISP,
having gotten everything off my chest, having been done a huge favour by the
Courts in both being given leave to re-file while at the same time wiping
the table clean of the horribly convoluted and complex mess that 5EX90059
had evolved into, we are free to proceed anew, and handle things exactly the
same as in the earlier and simpler days of 5EX00597...

Simple, clear, concise, the bare bones only, and most importantly proceeding
in the correct order, e.g. denying your opponents the thing that they crave
the most, the public forum, before addressing the issue at hand.

Above all, patience. these things take time, lots of time, so get on with
your life in the meantime.



baldrick bunt