Pseudolaw crackdown after ‘absurd’ cases clog SA courts
“Absurd” legal cases “clogging up the courts” will be stamped out under new reforms as pseudolaw groups grow, one even accusing the Supreme Court of “witchcraft”.
Courtrooms could soon crack down on people, including “sovereign citizens” who file dozens of lawsuits to annoy or harass others, Attorney General Kyam Maher announced on Thursday.
They are known as “vexatious litigants”, and laws surrounding how courts manage them had not been updated in a century, Maher said.
Adelaide University Associate Law Professor Joe McIntyre said the new laws were needed as SA was facing a “phenomenon” of pseudolaw – including a case of a group that accused the Supreme Court of “witchcraft”, and a judge of “treason” against “the King of England”.
McIntyre said an estate case saw about 40 people gather in the courtroom in August 2023, guided by an interstate pseudolaw “guru”.
The litigant was “arguing that the judge has committed treason and witchcraft, was engaged in necromancy because they were dealing with the estate of a dead person”, McIntyre told InDaily.
“This went on for 10 or 15 minutes, and then the guru stands up and tries to arrest the judge for treason… the whole 40 of them stand up and start advancing towards the judge to arrest the judge,” McIntyre said.
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“That group of them chased the judge’s associate later on that day across Victoria Square.
“It’s absurd, we can laugh at it, but when somebody is physically menacing you and approaching you, trying to take control of you, it stops being funny pretty quickly.”
The estate case was brought by Angela Georganas – the sister of the federal member for Adelaide Steve Georganas. Georganas and her 40 supporters were escorted out of the courtroom by sheriff’s officers, according to reports at the time, and the case was dismissed in a 2024 judgment.
In the past, to be ordered a “vexatious litigant” by the court, a person would have had to file a huge number of proceedings, McIntyre said.
Under reforms introduced to state parliament yesterday, courts have a wider criterion for vexatious litigants, meaning cases like the “witch-hunt” could be included because of the disruption it caused to the court.
Once a litigant is found to be “vexatious” by the court, it means their case could be thrown out, and if they wanted to file a new legal proceeding in the future, they would need it to be approved by the court.
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“Even if you’re declared vexatious, it’s not like we take away your legal rights,” McIntyre said.
“Unless you’ve now got a legitimate case, you aren’t getting to access the courts.”
He said it was a “systemic problem” that made court “miserable for everybody, and adding huge costs to courts, to local governments, to police, to health departments, to all government departments”.
“The pseudolaw litigation is completely clogging up our court system, so judges talking about judgment writing time blowing out from eight weeks to 14 weeks, we’re nearly doubling, slowing everything down,” McIntyre said.
Maher said the government was also told by the courts that the use of AI has empowered these vexatious litigants.
“The courts tell us that rather than often getting a couple of pages of hand-scribbled applications, often from vexatious litigants, they’re now seeing 60- or 70-page applications written with artificial intelligence,” Maher said.
The reforms are also expected to support those affected by domestic, family and sexual violence, Maher said.
The state’s Royal Commission found vexatious complaints can delay trials and make victim-survivors disengage with the system, “which could in turn result in a person who uses violence never having to face a trial”.
“Vexatious litigants are a drain on the system who make it harder for the courts to dedicate resources to those matters that do legitimately warrant their time,” Maher said.
“These reforms are about protecting South Australians from those individuals who seek to wield the justice system like a weapon against people they wish to cause distress to.”
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