It’s an October afternoon at the Royal Courts of Justice, central London. In a high-ceilinged, stone-floored corridor, barristers in black gowns and white wigs flick through fat files. A trio of dark-suited solicitors talk in low tones. The word “redacted” drifts up out of their conversation.



A few yards away, there’s a room with a very different picture. A man in a worn leather jacket is getting help filling in a form. Another, in his 50s, is on the phone trying to get a copy of a court order. This is the Personal Support Unit (PSU), a charity that helps litigants in person (LIPs), people going to court without lawyers or barristers. PSU volunteers explain procedures and forms, but don’t give legal advice. As an LIP, reading up on the law and presenting your case to a judge is down to you.

The stress of resorting to the law can be so great that, win or lose, most people are glad to walk away when it’s done. But not always. Some LIPs come back for more and carry on fighting their corner when most would have given up long ago. They believe that if only they could find the right judge, the right loophole in the law or the right bit of evidence, they will get justice. And then, almost without noticing it, the law has become their life.

Maurice Kirk, vet

“I’ve been a litigant in person for more than 20 years,” says 71-year- old Maurice Kirk. “My cases have taken over my life. They’ve cost me my family, my health and my qualifications as a veterinary surgeon. Twenty years – I never thought it would last this long.”

The case has taken over my life for 20 years. It’s cost me my family Maurice Kirk

Kirk, a qualified pilot who recently flew across Africa in a vintage air rally, says he’s currently fighting “about 15” court cases. Twelve are part of his 24-year dispute with South Wales police. He admits he has become obsessive about taking the police to court. “But I won’t give up because I know I’m right,” he says. The legal battles stem from “a campaign of harassment and bullying” which he says started in 1992, when he moved to Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan to open a veterinary practice.

“I was constantly stopped for motoring offences,” he says. He admits there were also high-speed car chases and a fine for resisting a police officer. Stung by what he saw as continued injustice, following previous run-ins with the police in Guernsey, Kirk started to go to court to get his convictions overturned.

“I was forced to be a litigant in person because the lawyers I employed proved thoroughly disappointing,” he says.

Kirk blamed South Wales police when he was removed from the register of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) in 2002 for unprofessional behaviour. The RCVS cited his 11 convictions among the reasons for striking him off. Kirk applied to go back on the RCVS register several times, always representing himself at hearings. They turned him down.

He changed tactics. “I thought if I could prove the police had treated me badly, I might be able to go back on the register as a vet,” he says. He decided to sue South Wales police for damages, but preparations were interrupted when he was charged with the illegal possession and sale of a Lewis machine gun.

Kirk, who already had convictions for assault, spent eight months on remand until a Cardiff Crown Court trial in 2010. He defended himself. The jury found him not guilty.

The damages case came to court in 2013. “I’d been preparing for this since the 90s,” says Kirk. “There were a lot of witnesses to find and interview. I hired a private investigator to trace some of them.”

Kirk represented himself in 47 days of hearings. He was allowed damages for two of 33 incidents, but the judge ruled there was no conspiracy. Kirk is preparing an appeal. South Wales police said: “It would be inappropriate to comment” as proceedings were continuing.”

Elizabeth Watson, company director

‘At the beginning I felt bewildered’: Elizabeth Watson at home. Her case file now runs to over 1,000 pages. Photograph: Alex Lake/The Observer

“I used to be terrified of going to court,” says Elizabeth Watson, “but I’ve had no option. Like most litigants in person I was forced into it.” Bournemouth company director Watson is fighting the Bank of Scotland for her home. The bank says she owes them more than £345,000. She says she doesn’t owe them a penny. “Something like this – it comes in and it invades your life,” says Watson. “It dominates the landscape. It’s like a rotting corpse.”

The case comes in and invades your life. It dominates the landscape Elizabeth Watson

What Watson calls her “life hijack” started in 2002 when she put money into an investment scheme run by Leicester accountants Dobb White. She says she was told it had the backing of senior people at the Bank of Scotland. The bank lent her £345,000 to invest in the scheme, but it was a fraud. Investors in the UK and US lost over $200m – around £165m at current rates. The Bank of Scotland came after Watson – and other investors – for their money.

Watson had been an LIP before. “They were silly things, though. A dry cleaner ruined a cream suit I had, so I took her to court for compensation.” Watson won these early cases. But going up against a bank with a full legal team has been very different. “There’s no equality of arms. It feels like a rigged game,” she says. Watson has now been to court “over 20 times”, with the case lasting eight years so far. The court file – in one judge’s estimation – runs to over 1,000 pages. “At the beginning I felt very bewildered.”

Although she has sometimes had legal help, Watson has done most of the work herself. She’s taken it all the way to the court of appeal and the supreme court. The bank won possession of her house in July 2015. Her attempt to appeal against that decision was dismissed in May this year. The judge criticised her for the way she’d run her case and gave her a limited civil restraint order. This stops her from taking any further action in the case without first getting permission from a judge. The Bank of Scotland is currently trying to make her bankrupt. Bankruptcy can effectively stop someone from pursuing civil action.

A Bank of Scotland spokesman said the bank “at no point provided advice or recommendations to customers about the Dobb White scheme”. He added: “Repossession is always a last resort,” and that the bank hoped, “we could still work with Mr and Mrs Watson to agree a resolution to this issue.”

Peter Oakes, retired engineer

‘Once you fall foul of an official body, all the others conspire against you’: Peter Oakes. Photograph: Alex Lake/The Observer

Peter Oakes has sued – or attempted to sue – the police, council officials and other public servants. He says he’s been to court “about 20 times” over the past 18 years.

“I’ve never won a case,” says 72-year-old Oakes, who lives in Crewe. “But I’ve had to keep going. My experience has unglued everything I believed in. Once you fall foul of an official body, it seems all the others conspire against you.”

I have never won a case, but I’ve kept going. My experience has unglued everything Peter Oakes

Oakes says his battles with officialdom started in the United States in 1991 when he owned a company selling aquarium supplies. A dispute over money with a client in Florida led to Oakes being arrested by local police and eventually found guilty on a charge of criminal trespass. He was fined $400.

Oakes insists he was innocent of any wrongdoing, so it’s understandable he felt unfairly treated by the US legal system. But he was also convinced he’d been let down by the British authorities.

“The Foreign Office did nothing,” he says. “They didn’t lift a finger in any shape or form to help me.”

Oakes’s feelings of injustice drove him to read up on the law. He hit on a clause in the Criminal Justice Act 1948, which he believed meant that British officials could be prosecuted for not carrying out their duties abroad.

“I reported [a Foreign Office official in Florida] to Cheshire police for misconduct in a public office,” he says. The police declined to investigate, so Oakes sued them for “failing to carry out their duties”. A judge threw the case out.

In protest, Oakes refused to pay the portion of his council tax that went to police services. His local authority, Crewe and Nantwich (now part of Cheshire East council), took him to court. He represented himself.

“My defence was under the Trade Descriptions Act. I wasn’t getting the services from the police, so I wasn’t paying the money,” he says.

Magistrates ordered him to pay up. He refused. Representing himself at a later hearing, he attempted a citizen’s arrest on a council official. That led to conviction for assault and two months in prison. The local authority eventually bankrupted him in 2010 for unpaid council tax and court costs. Oakes and his wife Jean had to remortgage their house to raise cash to annul the bankruptcy. “She doesn’t usually get involved, but she’s always been very supportive,” says Oakes.

Other fallout from his court cases include more convictions, for assault and harassment, and another two months in jail – as well as the belief that “the establishment is corrupt”. Oakes has had some sympathy from “the establishment” during his battles. A judge once told him that he “was satisfied that he has suffered cruelly over a number of years”.

“When all this started, people said to me, ‘You’re paranoid,’” says Oakes. “I’m not bloody paranoid. But when officials get something wrong, they don’t put their hands up and say they’re sorry, they just come back at you.”

Oakes now helps other LIPs with their cases. He’s also writing a book about his experiences. The Foreign Office said they did not comment on details of consular cases or individual members of staff. Cheshire police said they could not comment as they only hold records of civil cases for six years.

Julia McClaren, theatre producer

‘I just wanted them to admit they should never have done it.’ Julia McClaren. Photograph: Alex Lake/The Observer

When she was sentenced to seven years for fraud, Julia McClaren found the civil law becoming a large part of her life .

The former theatre producer went to court from prison when a cattery that had been looking after her cats, Arthur and Bella, gave them away without her permission.

They helped themselves to my property. And they thought they could do that because I was in prison Julia McClaren

“I was furious,” says McClaren. “I don’t have kids; I’ve never wanted kids. Those cats are my family. They mean more to me than anything.”

Arthur and Bella had been living with McClaren’s 83-year-old mother while she had been serving her sentence, but she’d been admitted to hospital after she fell and broke a hip. A social worker then lodged the two animals in a local cattery. But when McClaren sent a friend to pick them up, the cattery wouldn’t let her take them.

“They tried to make out that I’d breached their contract by not paying the bills,” says McClaren. “I wrote to them and pointed out that they’d never sent me any bills. And then they’d stopped my authorised representative from collecting them.”

Then McClaren heard the cattery had given away Arthur and Bella to Susan

Watkins, one of their employees.

“They’d helped themselves to my property,” says McClaren. “And they thought they could do that because I was in prison. I just wanted them to be forced to admit that they should never have done it.”

McClaren’s first stop was the library at HMP Downview, a women’s prison in

Sutton, Surrey.

She started to read up on contract law. “There were only about three books on the subject. And they were all way out of date. But the principles hadn’t changed. I looked at it all and thought to myself: ‘This is the perfect way of sticking it to them.’

“Cats are considered property under the law,” explains McClaren, who had been to court as a litigant in person before this case. “As property, they are owned by somebody. I believed that the cattery had breached my rights by giving the cats – my property – away to this woman.”

McClaren drafted detailed paperwork setting out why she thought the cattery was in the wrong and then started proceedings.

At court – which McClaren was taken to and from in a prison van – the two sides came to an agreement. The cats could stay with Susan Watkins for the moment, but McClaren would make arrangements for a friend to collect them.

However, Watkins refused to give the cats up, so when McClaren was finally released from prison nine months later, she went back to court. “At the hearing, Watkins went on that I was a bad person and that the cats would suffer if they were moved,” says McClaren. “I just pointed out that they belonged to me, not her.”

The judge agreed. He ordered that Arthur and Bella had to be handed over the following day – in the car park of a local supermarket.

“I have to say there was a rather petty sense of self-satisfaction of sticking one up to them,” says McClaren. “But I’d made my point. Just because someone is in jail, it doesn’t mean that they lose their property or their rights.”

Some names have been changed