MISFORTUNE IN THE 1980s
9220 Litigation
In recent years I have on occasion been litigious. In the main this was because I really hate being illegally treated. Sometimes I win, sometimes -- spectacularly -- I lose. My first major litigation was against a certain Mr Bodger – a very suitable name - who was at one stage my solicitor in Ashford. We were moving to Milton Keynes, and he was responsible for the transactions involved. We had found, after much searching, a house which looked just what we wanted -- not far away from the university. It was a detached four-bedroom house with two bathrooms and study. It was being built and was on the market for a hundred and twenty five thousand pounds. We put down a deposit, which was due to be rolled over after a month or so. Regrettably, Mr Bodger didn't roll over the transactions. The net result was that the builders came back and said the price had escalated by £16,000. Of course we couldn't afford that and so moved on, ultimately to buy the three-storey townhouse at Peartree Bridge. In the meantime, though, I started litigation against the solicitor.
After months searching I found a solicitor, Keith, who was willing to take on our suing another solicitor -- something that is not often accepted by ordinary solicitors. I should point out that, in the meantime, I had a meeting with Mr Bodger -- that really was his name -- where he had in effect admitted liability; and I discreetly recorded this on a dictating machine hidden in my pocket.
With this evidence it was very clear open and shut case. Even so, it took almost three years before the insurance company, who underwrote his liability, accepted that they were going to lose the case. On the way it got to be front page news in the solicitors' own newspaper, alongside the divorce of the Kashoggis. The insurance company, I am sure, worked on the principle of 'pour discouragés les autres'. They knew they were never going to win the case, but hoped that I would run out of money -- which I didn't -and in any case would use it as an example to discourage others who might be persuaded to follow suit.
Eventually they had to cave in, for £16,000 plus costs. On the other hand I should point out, for those of you want to go the law, that the costs typically only cover about 80 percent of what you actually spend. The other side, I suspect, parted company with £30,000 in total; but no doubt they considered worthwhile in terms of 'pour discouragés les autres'.
On a different level, I also took on the Inland Revenue. When I left IBM the arrangement -- which their experts worked out -- was that I would have my money paid over two years so that I wouldn't have to pay higher rate tax on it; which in those days was more than 60 percent. The Inland Revenue did not live up to this. They charged me with a full 60 percent on the second year. So, over the next five years or so, I argued with them, proving -- to my satisfaction -- that their experts were wrong in their interpretation of the law. Ultimately I had to go to one of their tribunal's, but I lost this. It was stuffed with stuffed shirts, who didn't know what they were talking about -- relying entirely on the clerk, who was just a local solicitor. I am glad to say that, as result of my complaints, this clerk was formerly reprimanded by the Lord Chancellor. Ultimately, I took the matter to the Parliamentary Commissioner, the House of Commons ombudsman. After extensive investigation she supported my case, but I was only able to get compensation to the amount of one thousand pounds rather than the tens of thousands I should actually have got.
The problem was that the odds were stacked against me for any other route. I would have had to go to the High Court where Inland Revenue would have been able to claim costs, should I lost, but I wouldn't have been able to claim costs had I won.
As you will see elsewhere, in much more detail, my later case against the Open University was even more tragic! On the other hand, once more, I sued my solicitors who had made a number of serious errors which undermined my legal position if not my moral stand. In this case, however, though the tens of thousands of pounds involved dramatically reduced my costs, I still did not receive the many times as much – the £130,000 for banked leave - that was morally my right.
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