What is a fit-for-purpose legal system?

The concept of making "bad experiences sufficiently rare" applies everywhere

Some good news! I now have a hearing scheduled to deal with my case against TV Licensing and how the BBC and Capita are playing a dirty (and illegal) shell game with the brand, in order to send assets to the BBC, and liabilities to Capita. To recap the story so far…

• The BBC kept sending me bullying letters as “TV Licensing”, threatening a visit to my home by “enforcement agents” unless I made a statement to them about (not) owning a television, something that I have no lawful obligation to do.

• I turned the tables on TV Licensing and said I have a commercial media service too, which is correspondence by post. They made extensive use of this superb facility (only available to select clients), but refused to pay my invoices.

• I filed a court claim, including for harassment, and obtained a default judgement. Capita, a subcontractor, then leapt in with a set-aside motion (“the dog ate our administration”), claiming to be TV Licensing, which was granted — despite them having no standing.

• I appealed, and by coincidence got the same judge as a friend also fighting official corruption. This judge started to mess me around as part of a pattern of bias against litigants in person holding corrupt officialdom to account where there was no standing.

• I successfully applied to get the judge recused, and now I have a proper appeal hearing scheduled. This has significance way beyond my single case, as fraud potentially unravels all convictions for license evasion, and severs the funding for the BBC.

The summary is: on the surface it looks like I made a mistake in suing “TV Licensing” as there is no such legal person; it’s just a brand. But the BBC are presenting it as if it were a legal person, including in copyright notices, in order to engage in criminal fraud. I am not the first one to notice this fraud, far from it, but have accidentally positioned myself in a place to do something about it. It is still in the County Court, not the High Court, but if it ends up there, it’s national news (and makes case law).

That said, I did make an error in dealing with transcripts, and the letter below to the court describes the problem in more detail:

Dear Sir/Madam,

The above case has been transferred to Newcastle County Court as the previous judge was recused. There appears to have been an administrative issue with submission of the approved transcript of the judgement, which I wish to resolve. The judgement transcript is attached, and I ask the court to accept this on the basis that the interests of justice demand that the actual matter is heard properly.

Although it is technically out of the time stated by the judge in his order of 9th November 2023, this was not a strike out order if this did not happen. To allow a strike-out on the basis of this transcript matter would essentially be to punish a civil claimant for being the victim of a criminal act by the other party. Therefore the spirit of the law should prevail over dogmatic adherence to administrative process. 

I had previously submitted the whole hearing transcript, and I genuinely believed I had satisfied the court's request and on time. I went back and checked, finding the separate judgement document, but did not realise this was not the same as the one I had emailed to the court. At the end of the day, the transcript is one of several unnecessary documents I have been asked to provide, as I claim the other party has no standing, and therefore the previous judgement is moot.

As a litigant in person dealing with this administrative complexity for the first time, I find this transcript management extremely confusing:

• The EX107 form is misleading on this matter and does not make the distinction clear as to what documents are being sought and whether they are aligned to the order.

• The "whole hearing" does not include the judgement, which is a trap that makes the system unfit for purpose for litigants in person

• The court has already received the transcripts to approve them, so it appears redundant to have to refile them

• Having two distinct documents to manage is an open invitation to error; it was perplexing when I got a second unexpected email from the transcript company.

• There are no guidance notes that I can see that make litigants in person aware of these wrinkles.

As a litigant in person, I had never expected to be (inappropriately) threatened with costs and potential bankruptcy for filing a small civil claim. This civil claim has uncovered potential criminal wrongdoing, and I am having to pursue it solely in the public interest. The same appeal judge is the subject of complaint in another case for abuse of process and costs. (In fact, there was a similar confusion on that case about a 'whole hearing' transcript being separate from the 'approved judgement' and the same judge accepted the 'approved judgement' part as a slightly late filing.)

This threat of costs for exposing institutional fraud had an negative effect on my mental health and well-being, and I ask the court to take this into account and accept this missing part of the transcript so that the matter can be heard. I did not ask to be involved in exposing a potential criminal fraud by major trusted institutions. Accepting this missing transcript makes no material difference to whether it had been filed on time, given the recusal and transfer of venue.

If this was purely about my original civil claim, then I myself would say it should be struck out for being outside of time. However, it is not. It is now a major public interest matter whether the BBC and Capita are playing an unlawful "shell game" with the brand "TV Licensing" in order to shift assets and liabilities around. The consequence of this case could include unravelling of other parties' criminal convictions for license evasion, so the scope and importance is way beyond my small civil matter.

I have had to deal with seeing the former judge on this case cause a miscarriage of justice to another litigant in person (where I was a McKenzie friend), then I had to go through the whole recusal process through no fault of my own. I have had to file several unnecessary documents that have no relation to the standing matter. On the basis of the overriding interest specified in the Civil Procedure Rules, I ask the court to accept this filing, even if it is delayed, and schedule a hearing to resolve the core issue of standing of the other party.

Yours faithfully,

Martin Geddes

The bottom line is… the legal system is set up for lawyers, not the public. There are “usability” defects that make it almost impossible to access justice unless you are skilled in navigating all the weird oddities in every administrative process. Products and services in the ordinary commercial world would not have these problems; the handoffs and interfaces would be managed differently. It should be possible for close to anyone to seek justice in ordinary litigation without professional help, and that’s not where we are at.

In my former guise as a telecoms professional, I was taught the phrase “make bad experiences sufficiently rare”. What that means is there is little reward in making good experiences excellent, or even mediocre ones into good ones. What really matters is eliminating the failures that have costly repercussions, as the product or service poses risks with subsequent losses that are excessive. In this case, the way transcripts are confusingly divided into two documents, with a “whole hearing” not being the whole hearing, is a bad experience. It risks the case being struck out on procedural grounds.

The legal system should be set up for litigants in person to access it, and failures of access should be investigated in the same way that air crashes are documented, so there is continuous improvement. While it may be necessary to get legal advice on the law itself, the basic mechanics of the justice system ought to be transparently accessible to all. The experience of myself and others is that elementary parts of document handling, hearing scheduling, correspondence, audit trails, and fee paying are broken. The courts are becoming overburdened with the “failure load” of their own design defects.

I am hoping that in the world to come there will be far less litigation, and precious little corruption to be confronted. That said, it would be good for the bad experiences of members of the public who were pursuing public interest cases to be documented down the line. The system right now is dominated by vested interests of the legal profession, and needs to be returned to its core role of serving the public (and nobody else). There is much that is working and most of the individuals are competent and honest. Good experiences are possible, but bad experiences are far too common. Every case should have follow-up to gather feedback on the system itself.

Inside HMS Trincomalee, National Museum of the Royal Navy, Hartlepool