Richard v Beresford

[2023] NZHC 500

IN THE HIGH COURT OF NEW ZEALAND WELLINGTON REGISTRY

I TE KŌTI MATUA O AOTEAROA TE WHANGANUI-A-TARA ROHE

CIV-2023-485-116

[2023] NZHC 500

BETWEEN

RICHARD

Plaintiff

AND

RICHARD JOHN BERESFORD c/- REGISTRAR-GENERAL OF NEW ZEALAND

Defendant

Hearing:	On the Papers
Counsel:	Plaintiff in person Defendant in person
Judgment:	14 March 2023

JUDGMENT OF McQUEEN J

[1]    On 1 March 2023, “richard”, described as the “complainant”, presented to the Wellington High Court a “Bill in Chancery” (which I will refer to as “the claim”) together with an unsworn affidavit in support. The matter has been referred to me as Duty Judge by the Registrar under r 5.35A of the High Court Rules 2016.

[2]Rule 5.35A provides:

(1)This rule applies if a Registrar believes that, on the face of a proceeding tendered for filing, the proceeding is plainly an abuse of the process of the court.

(2)The Registrar must accept the proceeding for filing if it meets the formal requirements for documents set out in rules 5.3 to 5.16.

(3)However, the Registrar may,—

RICHARD v BERESFORD c/- REGISTRAR-GENERAL OF NEW ZEALAND [2023] NZHC 500 [14 March 2023]

(a)as soon as practicable after accepting the proceeding for filing, refer it to a Judge for consideration under rule 5.35B; and

(b)until a Judge has considered the proceeding under that rule, decline to sign and release the notice of proceeding and attached memorandum for the plaintiff or the applicant (as appropriate) to serve the proceeding.

[3]    Rule 5.35B(2) provides that the Court may, on its own initiative, make an order or give directions so that the proceeding is disposed of or proceeds in a way that complies with the Rules. This includes an order under r 15.1 striking out or staying the proceeding.

[4]    The power to strike out a proceeding under r 5.35B is applied sparingly, but it may be used as necessary, to protect defendants from oppressive proceedings, or to protect public confidence in the administration of justice. It is usually appropriate for the Court to ask the following questions:1

(a)whether it would be manifestly unfair to the intended defendant that they be required to respond; and

(b)whether right thinking people would regard this Court as exercising very poor control of its processes for it to allow the complainant’s document to be treated as a proper document.

[5]    Overall, rules 5.35A–5.35C set out a process by which proceedings that are plainly an abuse of process may be considered by the Court before service on an intended defendant. Their purpose is to ensure that the Court’s processes are not used inappropriately and to avoid the imposition of the requirement to respond on an intended defendant to a proceeding that ought not to have been brought.

The claim

[6]    The claim is lengthy and sometimes difficult to understand. It does not comply with the High Court Rules 2016 and indeed asserts that Court rules are not to apply. It

1      Siemer v Registrar of Supreme Court [2019] NZHC 2345 at [6]; Mathiesen v Slevin [2017] NZHC 2258 at [4] and [7]; and Mathiesen v Slevin [2018] NZHC 1032, (2018) 25 PRNZ 116 at [6]–[7].

appears to seek declaratory and injunctive relief. The complainant wishes to have the claim determined in a court “of Chancery”, notwithstanding that no such court exists (or has ever existed) in New Zealand, in which the courts have a “fused jurisdiction”, meaning the ability to exercise both common law and equitable jurisdiction.2

[7]    There is an immediate issue in that the complainant and the defendant are the same person. This is a result of what the complainant has described as the distinction between himself as “Richard” and the legal entity “RICHARD JOHN BERESFORD”, which he considers was created at the time of his birth through his birth certificate. This is presumably why the defendant is named as being “RICHARD JOHN BERESFORD c/- Registrar General of New Zealand”, which is likely intended to refer to the Registrar-General charged with the administration of the Births, Deaths,

Marriages, and Relationships Act 1995.3

[8]    The complainant appears to seek that the legal entity “RICHARD JOHN BERESFORD” as described in his birth certificate have its status changed from “living” to “deceased”, because:

The self-evident truth of the matter is that the extra feto embryonic material and placenta also born slightly later on that day also died on that day, it died by abortion and an act of violence with a weapon, died prematurely as an act of, maybe unwittingly by the assaulter, of intentional premeditated interference in the divine natural order of life, depriving me of my due remaining sustenance. Regardless i [sic] survived the premature abortion of my sustaining organ, whole, but at the end of the day, thankfully, my extra feto embryonic material and placenta became deceased.

As the registered event entity is deceased, it [is] now required, pertaining to

88 of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Handbook on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems, Management, Operation and Maintenance, revision 1, New York, 2021, and as a function of the civil registration component, that the assigned PIN of the deceased person RICHARD JOHN BERESFORD, be changed, by retirement of the PIN of RICHARD JOHN BERESFORD by flagging the PIN or changing its status from “living” to “deceased”, as prescribed by law.

[9]    Claims such as the present one are characteristic of the consent-based Sovereign Citizen, “dual personality” or “Organised Pseudolegal Commercial

2      See Supreme Court Ordinance 1841 (Ordinance 1, Session 2, 1841); and Senior Courts Act 2016, s 12.

3      Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 1995, s 79(1).

Argument” (OPCA) theories that have been consistently rejected by the courts as legally untenable and “without legal foundation”.4

[10]Pseudolegal claims:5

…[mirror and co-opt] the language, forms and structures of legal reasoning [but lack] substantive engagement with the core norms, principles and methods of legal reasoning. Proponents of pseudolaw appear to have a genuine belief that their doctrines represent the ‘true’ position of the law where more ‘mainstream’ approaches have become illegitimate for some reason(s). This means that adherents can disregard existing legal norms while simultaneously retaining of a self-conception of lawfulness and righteousness.

[11]   Such claims are undoubtedly damaging, and are a growing issue across the common law world. As has recently been stated, pseudolaw:6

…hurts litigants, their families (whānau), and friends. Litigants employing pseudolaw waste time and money. They forego the opportunities to obtain capable legal representation. It creates opportunities for scammers and charlatans. Pseudolaw is also harmful to the proper administration of justice. Legitimate legal issues may be buried under pseudolegal gibberish and could be dismissed too hastily.7

[12]   In line with this approach, the Sovereign Citizen or “dual personality” pseudolegal belief is that “sovereign” individuals are not bound by the laws of the jurisdiction in which they reside unless they waive their rights and accept a contract with the government. Litigants who ascribe to this belief typically write their names in a non-standard fashion, thereby seeking to demonstrate that they do not consent to the Court’s authority.

[13]   The part of the complainant’s claim that seeks to change his birth status from “living” to “deceased” appears to me to seek that this Court engage in legitimising that theory, essentially to validate the complainant’s position that the law only applies to

4      See for example: Warahi v Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections [2020] NZHC 2917; upheld on appeal in Warahi v Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections [2022] NZCA 105 at [9]–[11]; James v District Court Whanganui [2022] NZHC 2309; Niwa v Commissioner of Inland Revenue [2019] NZHC 853, [2019] NZAR 1104; Warren v Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections [2017] NZSC 20; Rangitaawa v Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections [2013] NZCA 2; Martin v Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections [2016] NZHC 2811 at [20].

5      Stephen Young, Harry Hobbs, and Joe McIntyre “The growth of pseudolaw and sovereign citizens in Aotearoa New Zealand Courts” 1 [2023] NZLJ 6 at 7 (emphasis in original).

6      At 6.

7      Republic Arms Ltd v Corporation Trading as New Zealand Police [2022] NZHC 3185 at [3].

fictional legal personalities, rather than natural persons. It appears that the complainant believes that:8

Because every person has inalienable, natural rights, governments must assert their authority over natural or ‘flesh and blood’ persons to make them subjects. Governments do that, for example, when a birth certificate, bank account, driver’s licence, or government identity is issued. Those actions create an ‘artificial’ person – a legal person, personality, corporation, or ‘strawman’ – over whom the government and its agencies, which are parallel corporate forms, have jurisdiction. The crucial aspect is that the natural or living man or woman is freed from government subjection when they assert their status, claim it, and prove it.

[14]   This is clear in the naming of the parties in the complainant’s claim. He, as a ‘natural person’, seeks to be divorced from the “artificial” conception of him as a legal person, which he believes is embodied in his birth certificate. 9 The complainant seeks the same outcome for his five children.

[15]The complainant also seeks orders including:

(a)the granting of probate for the estate of the deceased person RICHARD JOHN BERESFORD, and also his five children, on the basis that they are all deceased persons;

(b)primary care of his children, notwithstanding that it appears their mother, his ex-partner, presently has primary care of them;

(c)counsel and resources to assist him to obtain primary care of his children;

(d)an order that his ex-partner return to Wellington with his children;

(e)an order that enables him to choose and commission a therapist or counsellor for his children;

8      Above n 5, at 8.

9      This argument has been employed in attempts to avoid both tax and criminal liability, unsurprisingly to no avail, see Niwa v Commissioner of Inland Revenue [2019] NZHC 835; and Martin v Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections [2016] NZHC 2811.

(f)an order that removes or discharges the matters in CRI-2021-096-3103, and CIV-2021-485-502;

(g)if he is “deemed [to] have behaved unlawfully”, an order to bring him before a “proper” court of law;

(h)an order to provide him with evidence relating to his ex-partner that would assist the court;

(i)an order that his children are not to be involved in “exploitation involving slavery or death of our neighbours”;

(j)an order that he and his children are not to be subject to “any weapons of war”; and

(k)an order that any order made applies to his children until they are 21- years-old.

[16]   The complainant also records that he will “give up and forsake everything the commercial world has offered and given to [him]”.

[17]   The complainant provided an affidavit in support of his claim, which was not sworn or witnessed. The content of that document largely contains quotes from various sources, including but not limited to the Bible, Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Webster’s Dictionary, Black’s Law Dictionary, the Oxford Dictionary, and Butterworths New Zealand Law Dictionary. The exhibits attached to that affidavit contained further quotes from other sources, which the complainant seems to consider support his claim, as well as the birth certificates of him and his children. The affidavit also includes what appears to be correspondence with the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) in which DIA has declined the complainant’s request to discharge certain public records.

Analysis

[18]   The complainant’s claim does not articulate any valid cause of action and seeks orders that the Court is unable to grant. Chief among the barriers to the complainant’s claim is the view that his birth certificate can be changed to say that he is dead, when he is plainly very much alive. The same applies as in respect of his children.

[19]   Notwithstanding the form in which the claim has been filed, it is clear to me that the complainant has some genuine concerns regarding his ex-partner and children. In particular, it seems that he wishes to be the primary caregiver for his children. However, the manner in which his claim has been filed is highly inappropriate, and cannot be accepted in its current form. This is particularly so when it is apparent that there are already proceedings in the Family Court and an appeal before the High Court concerning the care and custody of his children, in which he is involved. Accordingly, the parts of his claim that speak to these concerns can be considered an improper and collateral challenge to an ongoing proceeding.

[20]   I stress to the complainant that if he wishes to meaningfully pursue his wish to be actively involved in the care of his children, he should engage in the family proceedings which are currently before this Court. I also encourage him to obtain legal representation for that purpose. It is in that forum, and with proper representation, that he can pursue his goals in relation to his children. Legal aid may be available to him to that end. I express no view as to his likely success.

[21]   In my view, this claim should be struck out. I consider that right thinking people would regard this Court as exercising very poor control of its processes for it to allow the complainant’s document to be treated as a proper document. Further, it is an improper collateral challenge to ongoing proceedings, and there is no true defendant to the claim.

Result

[22]Accordingly, the complainant’s claim is struck out.

[23]   As required by r 5.35B(3), I record that the complainant has a right of appeal against this decision.

McQueen J