Two Featherston residents tried to sue ANZ for $2 million after being told their unpaid council bills could be debited from their bank account.<\/p>\n
By Emily Ireland for Local Democracy Reporting<\/p>\n
The claim was thrown out earlier this year by High Court Judge David Boldt who said it was \u201cchoked with pseudo-law\u201d common in the sovereign citizen movement, comprising people who reject government and legal authority.<\/p>\n
ANZ wrote to Herman van Velzen and Elizabeth van Gool in September 2023 saying they had been informed by South Wairarapa District Council that the rates on their property had not been paid.<\/p>\n
The bank indicated it was writing in its capacity as mortgagee, and that there was a risk the council could require the bank to meet the arrears.<\/p>\n
In that event, ANZ would deduct the rates from the homeowners\u2019 bank account, which could result in the account becoming overdrawn.<\/p>\n
The residents demanded that the bank prove it had authority over “the living man or woman”; challenged the validity of the mortgage; and claimed local rating laws did not apply to them.<\/p>\n
They served ANZ with what they described as a \u201cnotice of discovery of theft\u201d and a \u201cnotice of tacit acquiescence\u201d demanding a substantial sum of money.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey signed their documents using fingerprints and their Christian names,\u201d Judge Boldt said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe total sum they now purport to claim from ANZ exceeds $2 million.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his ruling, Judge Boldt said he would \u201cnot attempt to analyse any aspect of the claim further\u201d and made a decision on the papers without requiring a hearing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes no sense at all, and none of the legal propositions said to support it has any basis in reality,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe claim is choked with pseudo-law. It includes numerous references to inapplicable statutory provisions, biblical citations, and tropes – such as the inappropriate use of the trade mark symbol, an incongruous fixation on admiralty, a rejection of usual forms of address and archaic phrasing – common in the sovereign citizen movement.<\/p>\n
\u201cClaims of that nature have been consistently struck out by the senior courts.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judgement served as an official “first strike” under New Zealand\u2019s court guidelines.<\/p>\n
Judge Boldt warned the residents that if they filed any subsequent lawsuit that was struck out as an abuse of process within the next two years, they would face an automatic three-year ban from launching civil proceedings across any New Zealand court or tribunal.<\/p>\n
The residents retained the right to appeal the strike-out order.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Local Democracy Reporting is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Featherston residents tried to sue ANZ for $2 million after being told their unpaid council bills could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,42,43,244,40,38,41,39,52],"class_list":["post-530448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-personal-finance","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wellington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}