Remember the big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico a few years back? In 2010, that was. 11 people died in the disaster. I used Twitter to get a shipment of Dawn sent to a group of people who were cleaning up oiled sea birds in Florida, back then. (I used to volunteer there in the mid-1990s.)

Well, the damages have finally been settled, and approved by a judge. BP will pay the US government and the five affected states up to $18.7 billion in penalties.

Read more about the settlement: here.

There is also a film about the disaster now.

On 28 March 2016, Citizens Advice published a new report,called

Standing alone.

 

It focuses on going to the family court without a lawyer.

The majority found self representing difficult, time consuming and emotionally draining. As well as a bad experience for court users, it also means litigants in person achieve worse outcomes compared with their represented counterparts.

Nine in ten litigants in person say it affected at least one other aspect of their life. Standing alone: going to the family court without a lawyer explores the four key areas affected: mental and physical health, working lives, finances and relationships.

But you should be aware of what yesterday’s Panorama talked about.

Among other things, Panorama told the story of a woman who received an e-mail from her solicitor, informing her that the solicitor’s firm had changed bank.

Could she please pay the £47,000 into the new account instead of to the old account? She did.

The e-mail was spoofed, a genuine-looking but completely fake e-mail, headers (source) and all. She had willingly paid £47,000 into the bank account of a hacker. Continue reading →

How can you prepare yourself for court situations as described in this long article in The Guardian?

Make sure that you feel comfortable in the court room.

You can do that by going to the court house – any court house – as often as you can. Enter the building, empty your pockets, go through the metal detector, and walk around in the building. Attend other people’s court hearings as a member of the public.

Pay a great deal of attention to how you feel and which things make you feel anxious. Or angry, or confused. Ask yourself why they make you feel that way and what you can do about it. Do not fight the feelings that well up in you. Most of the stress comes from trying to suppress feelings. That internal battle drains your energy and overwhelms you.

Go back into the court building time and time again, and teach yourself to look at your emotions from a distance, not seeing them as good or bad but as, heck, potted plants or tumbleweeds. Over time, they’ll probably disappear or show up briefly and then dissipate.

Teach yourself to stay calm in your court hearings.

This is the hard part. You can make sure that the people you will have to deal with in the court room, such as your ex, do not make you feel as panicked as one of the persons the article in The Guardian talks about.

You can do that by sitting in a room at home, with no one else around. Relax and picture yourself in the court room. Look around, and imagine seeing for example your ex there, and the other side’s barrister, and the judge, and everyone else.

Again, pay a great deal of attention to your feelings. Feel the panic and anger come up? The sorrow? The powerlessness? Let them be. Do not fight them.

If you do this over and over and over again, your feelings of panic and anger, powerlessness and pain may slowly start to disappear. It is hard work. Do it! It is worth it. Also, try not to look at your situation in terms of what you stand to lose, but in view of what you may gain, if that helps you.

Easy for me to say? Yeah! But I’ve been there. After my second court hearing, I walked into the ice-cold December sea because I felt terribly powerless. Useless. Later, I’ve stood in a court room’s toilet area, shaking, very nervous before yet another hearing.

I have also witnessed that lawyers themselves can get just as nervous and shaky and upset as you when they are the defendants in civil proceedings. It is a shocking sight. A moment of truth. The lawyers for the other side, too, are merely humans. They are not that different from you and me. They get tired and cranky and weepy, just like we do. But they don’t show it in the court room. Because they’ve taught themselves to remain as calm as possible in the court room.

It is not a matter of suppressing or fighting your feelings. It is a matter of acknowledging your feelings, accepting them and allowing them to come out – embracing them – when they don’t hamper your calm effectiveness. Particularly for Britons, who historically have been taught to abhor emotions, that can be very hard.

There is a great deal of information on the internet for those who go to court without legal representation, but not all of it is accurate, even when it’s published by a reputable source.

Just before I went to my first court hearing as a litigant in person (in legal proceedings that I had started), I quickly double-checked something on the web. What I then found was not what I remembered about it, but as the web site on which I found the information was high-quality, I assumed that I had remembered things incorrectly.

The judge set me straight. The information I had remembered was correct; the information I found on the reputable web site was out of date. it did not matter in this case, but it could have been important. Mistakes like this can get a case thrown out of court.

Also, even court staff such as ushers sometimes deliberately give you the wrong information, by way of joke. It is not supposed to happen, but it does. Be prepared for that.

Don’t pay too much attention by what that you’re told in the pub either. Many Britons may be excellent bullshitters, certainly when they’ve had a pint or two, but don’t get fooled by appearances. Don’t instantly discard everything you’re told, but don’t blindly take it for the truth either (or the opposite: the person you consider stupid may be smarter than you can imagine).

Rely on solid information. Be your own authority on the law and the legal process. That’s how you need to operate as a litigant in person. You set the course.

https://www.bihr.org.uk/thehumanrightsact?gclid=CJvYx66a6cUCFezMtAodTnAAMA

On 30 December 2009, the home office published Home Office Research Report 28: Improving public confidence in the police: a review of the evidence.

On 4 September 2014, a review of police functioning in England and Wales revealed that victims of crimes are being encouraged to investigate themselves, when they report offences to the police, according to the BBC. Other media, including The Guardian and the Huffington Post, also paid attention to the findings of this review.

Although the Association of Chief Police Officers appear to be explaining them as a consequence of austerity, these practices of telling victims to investigate crimes committed against them are not new.

When I reported an incident that according to the police constituted identity theft and harassment, the officer I spoke with informed me that I had to do the legwork myself if I wanted anything done because the police didn’t have the manpower to investigate these high-volume crimes. He also explained that what had happened to me could be very unsettling. He asked me whether I wanted counselling as it was available if I needed it. I appreciated that, but I declined.

That was in October 2008, when austerity measures did not play any role.

According to the BBC, the reviewers (led by Roger Baker) made similar observations, namely that this trend of telling citizens to solve crimes started before the budget cuts.

What may be related to the budget cuts, is that (in my own experience) police officers appear much less likely to offer any assistance with the psychological consequences of crimes people have been subjected to, even in more serious cases (other than standard phrases about victim support in automated recordings and printed information materials).

I think that I can safely assume that confidence in the police is currently worse than it was in 2009.

A September 2014 poll conducted by my local newspaper, the Portsmouth News, showed that only 8% of the respondents believed that police would properly investigate if they’d reported anything other than very serious crimes to the police. This number remained fairly constant during the increase of the number of respondents; the only brief deviation I saw was a percentage of 9.

But what does this low number mean?

In January 20913, the University of Twente in the Netherlands published a Bachelor thesis on the topic (confidence in the police). Notably researchers in the US and other non-EU countries have already conducted a great deal of work in this area.

When the public has a great deal of confidence in its police force, this can lead to increased feelings of safety and a decrease in fearfulness among citizens. Confidence in the police is also a good indicator for the quality of policing and of how well the public accepts the authority of the police as well as its actions.

Four factors play a role in the theoretical model to predict confidence in the police:

• age;
• gender;
• direct experiences (how much contact people had with the police and whether they viewed it as positive);
• indirect experiences (how much police-related reality TV people watch and how much they like these shows).

These factors also influence people’s fearfulness.

Confidence in the police consist of the following six components:

• Integrity;
• Lawfulness/legitimacy (whether police officers observe the laws in their actions;
• Efficiency and effectiveness;
• Democracy (fairness, openness about policies and responsibility for actions);
• Intention (work ethic).

How does the above relate to crime figures?

In October 2014, Portsmouth City Council’s publication Flagship reported that “crime recorded by police is down by 33% since 2007/8 and 8% since last year.” I wonder how these numbers relate to the numbers of actual occurring crimes. Does citizens still report as many crimes to the police as they used to when they have experienced over the years that the police won’t investigate anyway? About 90% of all rapes go unreported, I read the other day.

The Flagship also gave numbers based on a March 2014 survey with 849 respondents. Of those respondents, 2% had experienced burglary, 1% mugging or robbing and 3% was assaulted such as beaten up. It did not mention the percentage of these crimes had actually been reported to the police. It did mention that 40% of the respondents fear burglary, 17% fear mugging/robbery and 14% fear being assaulted or beaten up.

How fearful citizens are of crime and of becoming crime victims is generally related to how much confidence they have in the police.

In essence, the fearfulness among the public does not represent citizens’ “degree of silliness” but reflects police performance and the degree of confidence people have in the police.

How much confidence people have in the police is also related to how much confidence people have in other organisations, in general.

In the Netherlands, how much confidence people have in the police is positively correlated to the quality of the contact they had with the police in the preceding twelve months, but negatively correlated if they were a victim of crime.

The Dutch study at the University of Twente was based on survey data for 125 respondents in the Netherlands.

In the same year, the Erasmus University published an extensive study of trends in the public’s confidence in the police and what they mean.

Thanks for reading. Do you still report crime to the police?

“While those with money can secure the finest legal provision in the world, the reality in our courts for many of our citizens is that the justice system is failing them – badly,” Mr Gove will say in a speech in London.

The new Justice Secretary will deliver a damning verdict on the “creaking and dysfunctional” court system, warning that is riddled by inefficiency and bureaucracy which compounds the suffering of crime victims.

In his report last year, which was commissioned by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Leveson said: “Our conduct of criminal trials was designed in the 19th century with many changes and reforms bolted on, especially over the last 30 years.”

“The result is that it has become inefficient, time-consuming and, as a result, very expensive.”

In The Independent this morning. It all focuses on criminal justice only, but may have consequences for civil cases too. Read the rest of the article.

• the right to medical care
• the right to education
• the right and the duty to perform socially useful work
• the right to good working conditions
• the right to such public help as may be necessary to make it possible for a person to support his or her family
• the right to social security
• the right to good food and housing and to live in surroundings that are pleasant and healthy
• the right to rest and leisure

Like everybody else, I occasionally take items to repair shops to have them repaired. I have done that with shoes, with stereo equipment and with computers, including a laptop.

I always collect my stuff timely. Sometimes, the shop owner will text me when the item is ready for collection. If not, then the shop owner will have already given me a date from which I can collect the item. I usually give the shop an extra day to make sure that the product is indeed ready. If I am too busy to stop by sooner, then I collect my goods at the first available occasion.

But what are you as repair shop owner to do when a customer forgets to collect an item? It may sound incredible, but there are customers who still show up ten months later and ask for their stuff. Continue reading →

This claim came before the Court of Appeal in 2003, from the Central London County Court via the High Court. Professor Norman Palmer represented the claimant.

If I travel to your town, pick your lock, take a lovely locket from your home and make sure to leave no trace of my presence, go to the post office and post the locket to my home or to someone else’s address, can you sue Royal Mail for having shipped the stolen locket if you somehow find out and can even prove that Royal Mail transported your locket? “Of course not.” I can hear you say it.

Royal Mail was just doing its job for which it had been paid (postage). It had no way of knowing that the box or envelope it shipped contained stolen goods. Royal Mail has no obligation to check whether the contents of a shipment might be stolen. If you tried to take it to court, you likely wouldn’t get far but the whole thing could cost you quite a bit of money. Continue reading →

Another interesting case came before the High Court in January 2010. It took up four days. It bears similarities to the case of the destroyed art, but there are also marked differences.

There were two claimants and two defendants.

Continue reading →

A few years ago, in 2009, an interesting case came before the High Court. It was interesting because like so many claims involving interference with goods, it was a story about people, about mistakes they make, misunderstandings between them. and things that can happen to them. It was also relatively complex because it was a claim against three defendants, with a fourth defendant in a Part 20 claim brought by two of the original defendants, with the first two defendants and the third also pointing fingers at each other.

The claimant was sculptor Terry New.

Continue reading →

I just stumbled upon a series of excellent videos about going to court on your own in family law matters. They are good to watch for litigants in person tackling other areas of law too.

I recommend going to the court at least once before the day of your hearing. That way, you will know where to go on the day of the hearing and you’ll know how long it takes you to get there.

Take into account that a hearing can suddenly be scheduled in a different building for logistic reasons if there are several courts on the same location. Always check with court staff in which room (and which building) your hearing will take place (and listen to any announcements on the public address system, if there is one).