Name suppression has lapsed for the lay litigants who alleged that the New Zealand Government’s response to COVID-19 has subjected them to unlawful detention in a Habeas Corpus writ that failed in both the High Court and Court of Appeal.
The Court of Appeal judgment names them as DERMOT GREGORY NOTTINGHAM and ROBERT EARLE MCKINNEY (changed from A and B).
This isn’t a surprise to me for various reasons. Both Nottingham and McKinney (usually with Nottingham as the named litigant) have been mostly unsuccessful in many court proceedings over the past decade.
Nottingham and McKinney worked with each other as real estate agents and also in the company Advantage Advocacy Limited (now in liquidation), and jointly tried to prosecute myself and Allied Press Limited (charges withdrawn after 11 months of legal proceedings and also tried to prosecute APN Limited and Lynn Prentice on similar charges (dismissed at trial). Both also unsuccessfully opposed costs being awarded through multiple court proceedings.
One of the worst examples is summarised in Nottingham v Real Estate Agents Authority (CAC 10057) [2019] NZREADT 53 (26 November 2019) – this dates back to a business dispute beginning in 2009 and court proceedings starting in 2011, and I don’t know if it is over yet. The judgment details just some of a litany of woeful litigation, and is summarised:
The abuse of process which the instant case exemplifies is the initiation of proceedings in a court of justice for the purpose of mounting a collateral attack upon a final decision against the intending plaintiff which has been made by another court of competent jurisdiction in previous proceedings in which the intending plaintiff had a full opportunity of contesting the decision in the court by which it was made.
We find that it would be frivolous, vexatious, and an abuse of the Tribunal’s processes to repeat the re-consideration and consideration directed by Justice Thomas, and already undertaken by Judge Paul, whose findings were upheld in the High Court. As a result of that process, the appellants’ appeals can properly be described as “meritless”.
There’s other judgments that make similar findings.
That saga included a private prosecution that resulted in a scheduled 3 day trial taking 17 days and failing. As a result substantial costs were awarded against Nottingham, which led to him being adjudicated bankrupt in 2018 (I was one of a number of creditors owed unpaid costs awarded against Nottingham). McKinney featured in the bankruptcy proceedings, claiming Nottingham owed him hundreds of thousands of dollars, but that appears to be a part of a failed attempt to avoid bankruptcy.
Bankruptcy judgment due to unpaid court awarded costs: HONEY v NOTTINGHAM [2018] NZHC 2382 [11 September 2018]
Also in 2018 Nottingham was found guilty of two charges of name suppression breaches and five charges of criminal harassment, and sentenced to home detention. He failed in an appeal against convictions and sentence and the Crown succeeded in having his sentence extended. Nottingham very narrowly avoided a prison sentence, but is currently appealing the home detention (ironically if he wins that case he risks having tio serve some of his sentence in prison because that was the alternative outcome).
In this trial Nottingham was found to have been the main person responsibl;e for the notorious Lauda Finem website:
Either Dermot Nottingham is Lauda Finem (in other words, the leading mind of that blog) or he is so intimately related to it that it is proper to conclude that he provided information and draft articles to that blog site knowing and intending that they would be published.”
“He makes the concession…that he has never denied that he has supplied information to the website…”
See “Either Dermot Nottingham is Lauda Finem…or he is so intimately related to it…”
Nottingham also tried to appeal his sentence via Habeas Corpus and failed last month – see Nottingham v R [2020] NZSC 39 (24 April 2020).
He was released from home detention on bail last month pending a Supreme Court hearing later this month (currently rescheduled to 28 May).
In a separate proceeding Nottingham failed getting leave to appeal last month: Nottingham v Maltese Cat Limited [2020] NZSC 36 (17 April 2020)
There is also nothing in the various factual matters raised by Mr Nottingham that would justify a grant of leave.
It was reported on Thursday Duo who sued PM now ask for judicial review of Govt’s pandemic decisions
Two men who sued Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern by claiming unlawful detention during the Covid-19 lockdown are now asking for a judge to test the legality of the Government’s pandemic decisions.
The two men, who had their habeas corpus (unlawful detention) claims dismissed by the Court of Appeal last week, allege Ardern, Bloomfield, Director of Civil Defence and Emergency Management Sarah Stuart-Black, and the Commissioner of Police made orders “were no medical grounds of sufficient cogency to impose the lockdown”, documents filed with the High Court read.
The High Court confirmed it had received the application from the men for a judicial review yesterday, but it was yet to be processed.
There was good reason I commented at the time that I hope the court requires security for costs, due to Nottingham and McKinney’s high failure rate and failure to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs in various failed proceedings.
With another person, Andrew Borrowdale, having a judicial review proceeding already before the court there must be low to no public interest in Nottingham and McKinney being able to waste more court time without at least fronting up with security in advance.
From my experience, while Nottingham has put his name to most of their legal proceedings, McKinney has been almost as responsible for extensive harassment via legal proceedings.