| GOODNIGHT
KNIGHT
Earlier in the month I raised the issue of vexatious litigants.
Nut cases who tie up our courts interminably. Especially people
like Julian Knight, killers with time on their hands, bush lawyers,
with nothing better to do.
Recently, I told the personal story of a vexatious and bitter litigant
who was bankrupt but still dragged me through the courts on a phony
defamation issue that cost me $60,000 in court costs – even
though he was ordered to pay my costs and a jury found me innocent.
A very convenient bankruptcy.
His name was James R. French. A nutter who had at times sent me
up to ten abusive letters a day. He sued me for defamation. For
things I had said on this radio station and on the Hinch programme
on Channel Seven about a fraudulent Workcare claim.
He didn’t sue until about six years after the so-called defamation.
By then the ownership of 3AW had changed and the new owners hung
me out to dry. Refused to pay my legal fees.
We eventually got to court. A seven-day trial. In the witness box
this nutter claimed that God had talked to him through a hole in
his head. French testified that in a taxi in Adelaide he heard God’s
voice telling him to go to Melbourne and destroy Derryn Hinch.
Sounds goofy but I had to sit through a lengthy expensive trial.
A jury found me Not Guilty and ordered French to pay my costs. He
was conveniently bankrupt -- so the whole exercise in which I was
totally innocent cost me around $60,000.
I thought of that case when I read about Knight another vexatious
litigant.
He has cost the Justice Department about quarter of a million dollars
in the past two years to fight his repeated legal forays and FOI
requests.
It is a sick joke. Especially when people who deserve legal assistance
cannot get it.
Knight’s most recent case ran for eight days and cost about
$20,000 a day before Justice Philip Cummins dismissed the action
as
“unmeritorious”.
Attorney-General Rob Hulls is considering shutting Knight’s
legal avenues down by having him declared a vexatious litigant.
He should. He must.
Justice Cummins acknowledged that prisoners have legal rights but
has described Knight’s complaints as “unjustified, and
at best nit-picking”.
Today Knight was again ordered to pay costs when he failed yet
again with a frivolous court action contesting an earlier order
of $1000 costs against him.
Supreme Court Judge Murray Kellam ruled against him and said his
complaint was lacking in substance and had no chance of success.
Knight “earns” something like $35 a week in jail to
use for luxuries like soft drink and chocolates.
The court should rule that, say, $20 a week of that should go
to paying off his legal debts. Hit him where it hurts.
This mass murdered has exploited the system relentlessly. He has
been caught with illegal scissors, makeshift knives and illegal
computer discs in his cell.
Also literature on the Ku Klux Klan, Nazi parties and white supremacists.
Julian Knight killed seven people and wounded 19 others in 1987.
As I said a couple of weeks ago Knight should be declared a vexatious
litigant and deprived of such luxuries as a TV set and a computer
every time he breaches prison rules. Lock him away to serve his
time. And may he rot in there.
Friday, November 14, 2003
©Copyright
Derryn Hinch 2002
|
