A Deemster has criticised the use of ’pseudo-legal’ arguments by civil litigants in the island.

Deemster John Needham took the unusual step of issuing a judgment to dissuade the use of such tactics which he said had no legal basis and were bound to fail.

His judgment highlights the use by litigants of the UK-based Common Law Court, which in an unrelated case last year saw Health Minister David Ashford and public health director Dr Henrietta Ewart found guilty of ’crimes against the people’.

In that case, heard by the Common Law Court in Manchester Art Gallery last September, ’the people’ were represented by anti-vaccine campaigner Courtenay Heading, a former Manx government healthcare advisor.

He accused Mr Ashford, Dr Ewart as well as UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Jersey’s Health Minister Richard Renouf of an abuse of position, criminal coercion and fraud by proceeding with the ’unlawful’ use of the HPV vaccine.

The unanimous decision of the court was to find the defendants guilty in their absence of crimes against the people.

It ordered them to be removed from their positions and barred from having any future roles in health.

All HPV vaccines had to cease immediately until their safety was proven, the court ordered and Mr Heading was to receive an immediate payout of £250,000 to be equally shared and paid by the defendants.

Deemster Needham’s judgment came in a land dispute case where a defendant did not turn up for a directions hearing in the high court but instead sent a series of letters to the chief registrar and the court clerk in which she accused the authorities of ’entrapment’ and ’attempted criminal coercion’.

The defendant, who referred to herself as standing solely under the jurisdiction of the Common Law Court, questioned the lawfulness of the hearing, asking: ’Are the Isle of Man Courts of Justice, also known as Isle of Man Government, a private-for-profit corporation listed on Dun & Bradstreet? Is a legal fiction alive or dead?

’Are statutory courts unlawfully permitted to deal with living men and women?’

One of the letters had a Common Law Courts Great Britain stamp at the top.

Deemster Needham said he was aware of the phenomenon of ’organised pseudo-legal commercial arguments’ in which litigants put forward nonsensical concepts to try to claim they are not subject to the court’s authority.

He said all such approaches, tactics or arguments had no legal basis.

And he warned: ’Pursuing irrelevant matters may result in penalties in costs, or even the imposition of further penalties for contempt of court if orders of this court are not followed.

’Ultimately, adopting such hopeless tactics may divert the litigant from pursuing any legitimate defence, which in this case, involving as it does the question of the Partition Act, could mean the defendant losing her home.’

Deemster Needham said he raised these issues ’not to frighten or scare’ but to provide a ’sense of realism’ as to the important priorities for the defendant.