Richard John Beresford’s application to be declared legally dead is ‘pseudo law’

Richard John Beresford submitted his "bill of Chancery" to the High Court in Wellington last month.

A man’s application to have himself and his five children declared dead has been thrown out by a High Court judge who described the claim as “pseudo law”.

The applicant also tried to lay his claim in a court that does not, nor has ever, existed in New Zealand.

Richard John Beresford, who wished to only be known as “Richard”, listed himself as both complainant and defendant when he submitted a “bill of Chancery” to the Wellington High Court last month.

He applied to the court to have the person described in his birth certificate declared deceased, and asked for the claim to be heard in a court of “Chancery”, which does not exist.

Beresford claimed his “legal entity” of Richard John Beresford was created at his birth, and said in a statement to the court the “feto-embryonic material and placenta” also “died” the day of his birth.

An unsworn affidavit attached to the claim largely contained quotes from the Bible, Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Webster’s Dictionary, Black’s Law Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary, among other texts.

Justice Helen McQueen said in her decision the claim was “lengthy” and “sometimes difficult to understand”, and not only did not comply with court rules, but in fact asserted the court rules were not to apply to his case.

Justice McQueen rejected his claim, saying it was “characteristic of the consent-based Sovereign Citizen, ‘dual personality’ or ‘Organised Pseudolegal Commercial Argument’ (OPCA) theories that have been consistently rejected by the courts as legally untenable and ‘without legal foundation’”.

“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,” she said.

“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.

“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.”

Beresford also seeks the same outcome for his five children.

Justice McQeen said such applications were undoubtedly damaging, and a growing issue.

“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.”

She ordered the application be thrown out.

It is not Beresford’s first time telling a court he’s rejected his identity.

When he appeared in the Wairarapa District Court in 2014 charged with breaching a protection order, he told Judge Tony Walsh he no longer wanted to be known by his name.

During the 2014 hearing, he said he would be lodging an application with the High Court to relinquish his name.