A self-represented litigant who has launched a chain of vexatious proceedings has been barred from instituting further proceedings.
On Wednesday, the Federal Court in Brisbane made a vexatious litigant order against Brisbane woman Venetia Louise Storry, under Section 37AO(2)(b) of the Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 (Cth).
It labelled the undischarged bankrupt an “indefatigable litigant”, outlining her involvement in 24 proceedings over the past seven years, including 19 decisions since 2021.
The 33-page decision of Justices Lee, Feutrill and Jackman shows parties involved in the litigation included police, the Business Licensing Authority and the Office of Fair Trading; and the allegations included judge bias, errors and abuse of process.
The judges stated the most important factor that compelled the making of the order was that “present circumstances represent a clear example of where the court must act to protect itself from the expense, burden, and inconvenience of baseless and repetitious proceedings instituted by Ms Storry”.
“Ms Storry has had plenty of days in court, but she is not entitled to another person’s day in court to pursue quixotic and misconceived complaints,” they said.
“We are amply satisfied a vexatious proceedings order in this case is reasonably necessary to protect court resources so that they are available to other litigants.”
They said Ms Storry’s arguments were “replete with irrelevancies and misconceptions rendering them difficult to follow, and trying to understand them and make them comprehensible causes considerable court time to be consumed and directed to no useful end”.
They were also satisfied an order was reasonably necessary to protect Ms Storry from the consequences of her own actions.
“As was evident from the way Ms Storry presented her submissions … she is much vexed and disturbed by appearing in court to conduct her litigation. No doubt she has also wasted associated out-of-pocket expenses,” they said.
The judges also commented on the growing prevalence of such self-represented litigants, who they said “often disturb the normal conventions of the courtroom and substantially challenge the well-ordered roles of judges and lawyers in that they are … legally uninformed in a technical and rarefied atmosphere, unaware of procedure, often unknowingly in breach of convention”.
“Most self-represented litigants behave courteously and are often forced to do so because of circumstances outside their control and sometimes, of course, they present valid claims and defences,” they said.
“But a few self-represented litigants, unrestrained by the norms regulating the professional conduct of lawyers and aggrieved by a perceived wrong, become serial litigants obsessed with seeking vindication of their position and in doing so mount, often repeatedly, arguments which would never be advanced by a responsible practitioner. This phenomenon has occasioned significant problems for this court in the efficient exercise of its original and appellate jurisdiction.
“Any informed observer would conclude the incidence of this phenomenon has increased at the same time as a number of other developments in modern litigation, including: first, the increased demand on judges occasioned by the complexity and size of cases; secondly, the size and scale of the evidentiary material often placed before courts; and thirdly, the reality that courts are an arm of government dependent upon public resources at a time of increased focus on the efficient allocation of those resources.
“The stark contemporary reality is that there are an increasing number of controversies being brought before the court and a finite number of judges able to manage and determine those matters.
“Every day a judge of the court is required to deal with a vexatious proceeding is another day the judge is prevented from using the judicial power of the Commonwealth to quell a real dispute between parties who have invoked the court’s jurisdiction.”
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