Fleeced in Gateshead: the enborgification of law
The courtroom is a dangerous game, where injustice can emerge even when everything works “perfectly”
I was one of four observers in a court hearing this past week in Gateshead, just south of the River Tyne from the more geographically familiar Newcastle. The underlying matter concerns a man taken into social care by the health authorities and local council despite his stated wishes, and without the consent of the friend holding power of attorney, nor recourse to the Court of Protection. If true, it amounts to a form of state kidnapping under colour of law — the late-life analogue of familial child trafficking, only bureaucratised and sanitised. I have not heard both sides of the story, so reserve final judgement.
The case before the court was related but distinct. It centred not on the man, but on his friend and lay attorney, who has spent years battling the system through complaints processes marked by stonewalling and buck-passing. In the course of this, she was denied the use of disability aids in meetings, and — as she alleges — pushed through procedures that sidestep basic rights. Already managing mental health challenges, the experience compounded her distress. On that basis, she brought a claim against both the council and the health service. The hearing in question was a strike-out application.
I am less concerned here with the granular merits of the individual case than with what it reveals about the system itself. In short: the strike-out only partially succeeded, and most of the claim survived. Yet a two-hour hearing involving two barristers, which largely served to narrow issues already conceded, left the claimant facing an £8,500 costs order — an impossible burden for a litigant in person doing care work. She sits in a familiar no-man’s-land: theoretically eligible for legal aid, yet unable to find a solicitor willing to act; excluded from pro bono support because that same theoretical eligibility exists.
These events operate on three levels. First, the people physically present in the room — men and women acting in the moment, whatever their role. Second, the courtroom as theatre, where those roles are performed within the constraints of institutional structure. And third, the wider societal field of power, control, and, at times, domination. Much of the real action happens in what might be called peri-law — not the formal legal process itself, but the interactions and pressures that surround it. What follows is therefore a kind of jurisprudential travelogue: part court observation, part systemic critique.
What makes this case easier to analyse is that nobody was misbehaving on the day. Not security, not ushers, not the claimant, not counsel, not the judge. This was routine — entirely ordinary. Even if my own High Court excursions into jurisdictional edge cases might be considered exotic, this was not. That places my role primarily in the first and third layers: noticing the small details others overlook, and the large structures so dominant they become invisible. No individual acting in-role should feel personally criticised by what follows. This is about patterns, not personalities — anecdotes in service of archetypes.
At the outset, it must be acknowledged that the civil justice system spans the full spectrum of human behaviour. At one end, opportunists and abusers weaponise process to extract advantage. At the other, there are genuine and sometimes grave violations of rights, obscured behind administrative normality. Any diagnosis drawn from a single case risks overreach. Those within the system cannot carry the full moral burden of society; they still have to return home at the end of the day — everyone ends up in Tesco together. That said, the structural problems are real.
Upon arrival at security, before even passing through screening, the usher asked who I was. I have no issue giving my name or saying whose cause I am attending, but it felt slightly off. This is a public building, with open hearings; one does not need to account for one’s presence. Her immediate response was that I would not be able to attend the hearing — which turned out to be untrue. Being of a fairly stoic disposition, I wasn’t troubled: if that were the case, a £25 rail fare and half a day lost — that’s my story. I was directed into a side room while an alarm sounded somewhere in the building, left alone with a faded notice about social distancing.
While I waited for the claimant and other observers, a congenial and well-spoken young man, Tom, knocked and came in. He was counsel for one of the defendants. He noted that these hearings can be stressful for litigants in person, and suggested the claimant meet him and the other lawyer beforehand. It would be too much to call this kindness; it is simply good professional conduct, with reasonable self-interest included. Still, the tone was measured and settling. In other cases I have observed, counsel for official bodies can adopt a more aggressive stance. That was not the situation here.
There was some mild confusion around completing the form for a McKenzie friend, as one observer sat to assist the claimant. I asked the usher whether I could take notes on my phone and was told no; whether that is strictly correct I do not know, but it was not a point worth contesting. As there were more observers than usual, a larger courtroom had to be found, and proceedings began slightly late. The other side had a pupil barrister present, who appeared somewhat disengaged in posture — though I might be misreading that. Were I in his position, I would have been taking notes. Then again, I am not a lawyer; I am temperamentally disinclined toward competitive contests, preferring synthesis to adversarialism.
I couldn’t help noticing the progression of the lawyers through the stages of life: Tom still carrying a tint of blond, the other advocate now in greys, and the judge with full classical white locks — the visual arc of a profession. The bench remarked that it was unusual to have so many in the public gallery, but welcomed observers without reservation. For me, this is always a litmus test: judges who are at ease in their conscience are content to be watched. Those who carry unease tend to resist visibility. It boded well for fair treatment under the law, even if the law itself may produce outcomes one finds objectionable.
Both advocates had complete command of the idiom of the court — addressing its fictions fluently, participating with dispassion and technical competence. To me, it is as foreign as Papua New Guinean creole, and I find myself admiring the craft. The claim itself was imperfectly grounded in law and only partially formed in its presentation; procedurally, too, it was incomplete, with no pre-action letter. Robust advocacy in response was therefore entirely proper, without straying into defence of the indefensible. I cannot say whether Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights ultimately applies here, only that the arguments advanced were intellectually engaging rather than troubling.
The claimant was nervous, but fluent and factual. Her anxiety led her, once or twice, to speak over the judge — which made me wince — but it was clearly not out of disrespect. The judge, for his part, seemed fully alive to her status as a litigant in person, her sincerity, and the likelihood that she had been wronged in some way, regardless of the legal merits of the claim before him. He mentioned, almost in passing, that he was technically retired, returning to sit a few days each month. This was a man in command of himself, unconcerned with career or pension. It showed. In my experience, the best judges are often either at the beginning of their judicial lives — still animated by a sense of justice — or at the end, with nothing left to prove.
While the strike-out application was technically defensible — and a routine move — it was, in my view, never likely to succeed. There appears to be an underlying claim with some prospect of success, even if misfired at inception. The judge emphasised that his role was to uphold justice, and accordingly allowed the claim to be amended, granting three months to refile and obtain medical evidence. There was no sense of irritation from the bench — no “why are you troubling me with this?”, which I have seen from more irascible judges dealing with litigants in person. The deficiencies here were not born of personal failure, but of an inability to secure representation, prolonged obstruction by the defendants, and procedural complexity that ordinary people struggle to navigate without increasingly AI-assisted tools.
The real story, however, is not the partial success on strike-out, but the costs. The judge accepted they were entirely orthodox — consistent with fee scales, time spent, and scope of work — even if one schedule had been inadequately itemised and was reduced by around 30%. At the same time, he acknowledged they would appear “hideous” to the claimant. He repeatedly stressed that he was “just doing his job” in response to objections. At one point, he floated the idea of deferring costs to the end of the case. Both advocates reacted as though a pilot had announced it was time to assume the brace position. I nearly laughed — having staked far more than money in the pursuit of justice, including a conventional career and social compliance.
In the end, procedural orthodoxy prevailed. Costs were ordered payable within 28 days. The judge suggested this was, in part, a matter of practical negotiation, and that the claimant could seek a payment terms order aligned to her means. My sense is that she obtained what she needed — the continuation of the case — but not what she wanted. The judge appeared to be balancing competing risks: the prospect of a costs appeal, the claimant’s exposure to escalating liability, and the limits of his own discretion. An exceptional ruling to defer costs might have been bold, but also imprudent. What emerged instead was something closer to being “cruel to be kind.”
While the other advocate had a perfectly conventional name that I immediately forgot, Tom is blessed with a memorable one, so I looked him up afterwards. He has invested years in his legal education and is clearly a high-flyer. His appearance fee for the hearing was, I think, around £400 — not a large sum in context. I used to charge more than that as a telecoms consultant, and his work was worth it. I found myself quietly liking Tom, and respecting him. I liked the judge too — he came across as humble and diligent. And yet, something is not quite right. A quiet and selfless woman appears, on the surface, to be mistreated by the state, and the imposition of costs compounds that harm.
When I was seven or eight years old — the late 1970s — my mother took me and my younger brother to Windsor Great Park with a group of other families. It was a birthday outing, with a treasure hunt. Being older and faster than the toddlers, and naturally inclined toward achievement, I gathered far more prizes than anyone else. This did not earn approval. I was told to put some back. The lesson has stayed with me ever since: just because you can win doesn’t mean you should.
The problem here is structural, not personal. Lawyers act as agents for their clients, but in doing so they inevitably absorb something of the moral weight of the cause. If clients knew their claims would be meaningfully tested by their own representatives before being advanced, conscience might have greater influence. A more robust pre-action process — including a fixed-cost intake phase for complex cases involving litigants in person — would reduce risk for all parties. Greater flexibility in the timing of costs, applied with judgment rather than rigidity, could deter applications of this kind and encourage earlier, more collaborative resolution.
There is a great deal of post-industrial poverty in Gateshead. The sums discussed in court are fantastamagorical to the ordinary person. The accommodation of disability ought to be unremarkable — here, it simply meant the claimant using an audio recorder in meetings. Yet that is anathema to officials uneasy about being held to their own words, on the record, against the facts. Perhaps the deeper lesson is that something more fundamental must change: that citizens should have the right to record interactions with those acting in an official capacity. Though, of course, that might only escalate tensions.
At first, I thought the story was about the man placed into care against his wishes, and the fight to secure due process for the vulnerable. Then it seemed to be about the dignity and sanity of his attorney, the claimant in this case. After that, I wondered if the central figure was the judge himself — visibly uneasy with the outcome, yet able to justify it fully within the paradigm he inhabits, having been absorbed into the culture of the profession. That is the “enborgification”: the procedural laundering of what, to the ordinary person, looks like vulturism — feeding on the suffering of others.
On reflection, the more compelling figure may be Tom, early in his career — capable, decent, not yet dulled by indifference. What would it take for the system to evolve such that the question is not whether he is paid, but when and how? Material rewards can carry a spiritual cost. The claimant may have mishandled the claim; that should have consequences. But financial devastation at the outset ought not to be one of them. I am not a lawyer because I chose not to join the “borg”.
Costs are not merely monetary — they are moral.
I know. I learned that once, at a birthday party in a park — and it still hurts.