Sovereign Citizens frustrate trustee

If ever there was a judgment whose contents could legitimise efforts to codify misinformation so as to justify suppressing it then a recent decision from the Supreme Court of Victoria is it.

“The documents supplied by Einsiedels on behalf of the first defendant were nothing more than pseudo-legal gibberish. The documents filed by the first defendant with this Court, including his affidavit, are similarly incomprehensible gobbledygook.” Associate Justice Catherine Gobbo.

In Nelson v Greenman & Anor [2024] VSC 704 Associate Justice Catherine Gobbo revealed that not only was she presented with material from the first defendant demonstrating a disturbing distortion of the accepted and foundational legal principles prevailing in this country but that the first defendant’s former lawyers probably need to explain why they thought said material was appropriate for consumption by a judicial office holder.

“Even the most cursory review of the documents enclosed with Einsiedels’ Letter, leaves no doubt that the documents are no more than a jumble of legal gibberish,” the judge said.

“That those documents were conveyed by a solicitor on the basis that they recorded either proper and competent instructions or a trust said to support a caveatable interest in the Land, which Caveat the solicitor then lodged, is nothing short of staggering.”

One can only hope her honour was sitting when the aforementioned gibber was first perused.

iNO asked the Victorian Legal Services Board + Commissioner (VLSBC) if it had received a referral in respect of Einsiedels Solicitors of Narre Warren. Through a spokesman the VLSBC refused to say.

For context, the first defendant Paul Spencer Greenman is the purported special trustee for the DOUGLAS, Stephen Ross, Estate Trust. Mr Douglas is the undischarged bankrupt who claims his interest in the land passed to the trust and because a church occupies the land the land is excluded property and beyond the reach of his trustee in bankruptcy.

Enter Simon Nelson, Douglas’s trustee and the applicant seeking the removal of the caveat lodged by Greenman.

Since being appointed in 2019 Nelson has been in and out of courts pursuing his right to take possession of the property, located in Koo Wee Rup and from the judgment it’s clear Nelson has some familiarity with the feelings expressed by her honour.

The bankrupt and certain associates have also been busy, either denying that the courts or the trustee have jurisdiction over the property in question or, contradictorily, asserting their appeal rights in full in these same supposedly illegitimate courts and tribunals.

Nelson kicked off efforts in 2022, obtaining the necessary order for vacant possession of the land in the Federal Court, followed shortly afterwards with a warrant of possession so sheriffs charged with attending and seizing the property had a paper to wave.

Unfortunately for Nelson the sheriffs left Koo Wee Rup unfulfilled, the bankrupt having advised them on arrival that a tenancy agreement was in place between him and his adult son, Philip Ross Douglas.

This forced the trustee to turn to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (‘VCAT’) where he made an application for possession under ss 322(1) and 91ZZB of the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 (Vic).

In September 2023 VCAT issued orders to vacate to the bankrupt and his son and the following month issued a warrant of possession for the land in Nelson’s favour.

Within days the bankrupt and his son filed an application in VCAT to reopen the order to vacate pursuant to s 120 of the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal Act 1998 (Vic).

After VCAT dismissed their application for review on November 16, 2023 they filed a Notice of Appeal in the Supreme Court of Victoria seeking leave to appeal the entirety of the VCAT order made on 16 November 2023.

Subsequently, on 7 December 2023, the Bankrupt and his son Philip Douglas filed a summons seeking a stay of execution of the VCAT Warrant until the hearing of the application for leave to appeal.

For people who don’t believe the government has the right to levy taxes they sure lean heavily on tax payer funded institutions, a seeming contradiction not lost on her honour in the application brought before her.

“I otherwise note that before me, the first defendant sought to class himself as the ‘Living Man’ in order to create a different identify from that of the person named in the Court proceeding as the first defendant,” the judge said.

“It is not without some degree of irony that, on the one hand, the first defendant sought to rely on the legal protections afforded by reason of lodging the Caveat over the Land in the name of Paul Spencer Greenman but simultaneously sought to divorce himself from that persona when his conduct in lodging the Caveat was subject to challenge.”

Unsurprisingly her honour found in Nelson’s favour, ordering that the caveat be removed immediately and that Greenman pay Nelson’s costs on the indemnity basis.

Removal of the caveat will allow contracts for sale of the land to be settled. How Nelson goes about extracting costs however will be worth a follow up.