KEY POINTS:
A full bench of the High Court at Auckland has ordered a persistent complainant to stop bombarding the Human Rights Review Tribunal with hopeless, abusive and vitriolic proceedings.
In their written decision, Justices Hugh Williams and Geoffrey Venning took the rare step of granting a request by the
Attorney-General declaring Christopher Joseph O'Neill a vexatious litigant.
He has been told he cannot start any new cases before the tribunal and others already filed must stop unless he gets High Court permission.
In the five years to August 8 last year, Mr O'Neill filed 93 proceedings with the tribunal. Since then he has filed between 15 and 21 more.
His targets included the Ministry of Health, the Police Complaints Authority, the Privacy Commissioner and the Human Rights Review Tribunal itself, as well as individuals such as the Prime Minister, Attorney-General, Minister of Justice, Governor-General and others.
Mr O'Neill's list of gripes has been just as wide-ranging.
He alleged discrimination on grounds of his race or ethnic origins because a proposed defendant had used legal Latin phrases in submissions in another case.
He said use of Maori language by the Associate Minister of Health in a letter to him was discriminatory. He alleged discrimination because of his political opinions.
He complained he was discriminated against because the Police Complaints Authority had declined to uphold his complaint that the police had failed to investigate someone he considered of criminal character.
He complained of breaches of his privacy and of discrimination by the Privacy Commissioner on grounds of gender.
In another case he claimed discrimination on grounds of political opinion, disability and employment status by the Privacy Commissioner blocking his emails and telephone calls and making him resort to post. Of the 39 cases determined by the tribunal, only two went in his favour.
It found that the ACC's failure to provide him with health information about him on file was an interference with his privacy.
It also found that the Dispute Resolution Services Ltd's failure to respond to Mr O'Neill's email amounted to an interference with his privacy.
The tribunal had described some of his claims as trivial and frivolous, vexatious, untenable, abusive, aggressive, unnecessarily argumentative, unmeritorious, tub-thumping and a waste of people's time and resources.
The High Court said it was satisfied Mr O'Neill had persistently instituted vexatious legal proceedings without reasonable grounds.
Almost all had been hopeless.
"Mr O'Neill's proceedings are generally characterised by meritless claims, often directed at individuals for no reason other than they have made decisions adverse to Mr O'Neill."
He had "flooded" the tribunal with civil proceedings to the extent that, at August 7 last year, Mr O'Neill's cases comprised 57 per cent of the tribunal's active caseload - and more had been filed since.
The judges said the tribunal's resources were limited and the sheer volume of Mr O'Neill's cases meant that people with worthy claims had their hearings delayed while the tribunal dealt with his frivolous proceedings.
It was not only desirable but necessary to make the order, noting the vitriolic personal attacks by Mr O'Neill on people who had not determined matters in his favour.
"We are in no doubt that Mr O'Neill will not modify his behaviour without the intervention of the court," the judges said.
Mr O'Neill could not be relied on to exercise restraint and the defendants were entitled to protection.