Althea Reyes strode through the carved wooden doors of a Toronto courthouse. Poised and almost patrician, she descended the stone stairs with her chin held high, a Victoria’s Secret shopping bag draped over her elbow.

Moments earlier, she had stood before a judge and with practised composure acted in her own defence and asked for an adjournment.

For Reyes, the courtroom is a familiar place.

She is one of a small number of people deemed vexatious litigants who repeatedly file lawsuits and court motions, tying up Ontario’s already clogged courts with often frivolous matters. Because she is a vexatious litigant, she is not allowed to pursue certain cases in court without a judge’s permission. But that hasn’t stopped her.

Over the past several years, Reyes has also been defending herself against criminal charges that include fraudulent impersonation, but has still found time to launch a barrage of civil suits.

Judges have said she has abused the legal system. Still, she continues to lob lawsuit after lawsuit, targeting successful men she had relationships with, a school board, bank employees, a pawnshop, a dry cleaning business, lawyers who have opposed her in the courtroom, and a complete stranger.

At the Old City Hall courthouse, Reyes, 50, refused to talk to the Star about her use of the legal system or the criminal charges she is facing.

“Because the matter is before the court, I can’t discuss it,” she said. “I can’t discuss anything.”

In the early 1990s, Reyes was a dethroned beauty queen on a quest for justice. The aspiring lawyer had won the title of Miss Black Ontario in 1989 and then sued the pageant for $400,000 for prizes she said she was owed, including a car. She alleged she was stripped of her title because she fought back; the pageant’s organizers said they took her tiara because she failed to attend enough functions.

“I am not concerned about money,” she said at the time, as reported in the Star. “What concerns me is that I believe there is an injustice being done.”

She later dropped the suit, blaming it all on a misunderstanding. But, armed with a law degree from Dalhousie University, she would return to the courts time and time again, filing lawsuits and court applications across Ontario.

After graduating from law school in Halifax, Reyes pursued a teaching degree and, in recent years, worked for a company that provides home-schooling. She has at least two children of her own — a son in university and a younger daughter.

In the cases reviewed by the Star, Reyes presents as equal parts desperate and defiant, a woman backed into a corner with no choice but to turn to the justice system for help.

In Toronto alone, she has sued at least 30 people, companies and organizations in the past five years.

When reached by the Star, many of those people would not comment on the woman who had pulled them into court, or the documents on which this story is largely based.

Included in several of those cases are the details of failed relationships with a string of men who hold prominent positions in the worlds of media, finance and the arts, including one who gave her almost $100,000 and paid private school fees for one of her children.

Documents show she accused some of her former romantic partners of “woman abuse” and “scandalous and inhumane” behaviour, including pushing her down stairs, repeated infidelity, lying to police to have her arrested, getting her fired from a job and causing her to lose more than $100,000 of her possessions and her pets.

Because of the grave and unsubstantiated nature of some of the allegations, the Star has decided not to identify the subjects of those lawsuits.

One of those people was a director at a Canadian bank.

The pair briefly lived together in his Toronto condominium, but their relationship deteriorated and he was forced to change the locks and put her things in storage after she repeatedly refused to move out, according to court transcripts.

Reyes then forged a lease agreement to get an order from the Landlord and Tenant Board forcing him to let her back into the unit.

He contacted the police and, in October 2013, Reyes pleaded guilty in criminal court to fabricating evidence. She received a suspended sentence with probation but is now appealing the conviction, saying the stress of the arrest and their relationship made it impossible for her to understand the consequences of the criminal charge.

She also filed a lawsuit in small claims court against the banker in 2014, which was dismissed.

In his small claims court filings, he called Reyes’ claims false and baseless, saying she “regularly uses the judicial system to attack and harass people.”

In June 2009, following an acrimonious child support case for her daughter that Reyes dragged out with an onrush of court applications, a Superior Court judge declared Reyes a vexatious litigant for court matters involving her daughter.

It is one of just 193 times Ontario’s courts have made an order declaring someone a vexatious litigant.

“I am satisfied that (Reyes) has abused the processes of the court by the various proceedings she has brought,” Justice Stanley Kershman said in his 2009 order.

The declaration means Reyes requires permission from a judge to start or continue any existing court proceeding “directly or indirectly relating to” her daughter in any court in Ontario.

But Reyes continued to file new lawsuits involving her daughter.

In September, a Superior Court judge threw out three of those cases, explaining that “the court has mistakenly allowed several claims to be commenced by the plaintiff without leave.”

The judge used a 2014 rule designed to simplify the process of stopping vexatious litigants in Ontario.

Before this rule was put in place, a defendant would have to file a motion to stand before a judge and ask to have the claim dismissed, and in most cases pay the cost of hiring a lawyer. They would also eat up precious court time in a publicly funded system where almost 140,000 civil cases were processed in 2014 alone.

Now, a letter to the courts from the defendant, a lawyer or court staff flagging the vexatious designation can prompt a judge to step in and halt an unapproved lawsuit. The hitch is that the court must somehow be made aware of the original order.

“The legal system itself is dealing with a significantly larger number of (vexatious) matters. They consume court staff time, they consume judges’ time, take up lawyers’ time … that slows down everything in the court system,” said Kevin Toyne, a civil litigator with Hill Sokalski Walsh Olson LLP.

Since the rule came into effect, a total of 74 matters have been considered for a stay or dismissal.

One of the cases thrown out by a judge was against a man Reyes dated, a prominent figure in the Canadian arts community. Reyes, in that short-lived claim, alleged that he interfered with her employment and damaged her reputation.

She is also suing him in small claims court for $15,000 worth of belongings she said he threw out after she was evicted from his apartment.

That lawsuit and at least three others filed in small claims court were bankrolled by taxpayers because Reyes filed for financial relief available to people who could not otherwise afford to start a claim.

Her former romantic partner denied the claims in Reyes’ lawsuit.

According to a court transcript, the man knew Reyes as Allie. In fact, he did not learn her real name until she was arrested in late August 2015 for failing to attend court and he was asked to be a surety.

Reyes has gone by a number of names: Althea, Allie, Elle. She is currently facing a criminal charge of fraudulently impersonating an Allison Reyes in renting an apartment at 83 Elm Ave.

An “Allison Reyes” — alleged to be Althea — sued the landlord of that apartment complex, who had obtained an order from the Landlord and Tenant Board to evict her after Reyes was seen “assaulting a superintendent,” according to a statement of defence submitted by the landlord in Superior Court.

That lawsuit, launched after an unsuccessful appeal of the eviction, was originally against a slew of people, including the building’s landlord, its lawyer and even a complete stranger whose last name happened to be the same as the property management company.

In a bizarre twist, Althea Reyes has filed an application to join the lawsuit as a participant, alleging she was storing $100,000 worth of property at the apartment that was lost when “Allison Reyes” was evicted.

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Now, at an upcoming hearing in December, the court may have to untangle whether Allison and Althea Reyes are in fact the same person.

Reyes does not just fight her own legal battles. She held herself out as a lawyer and convinced prospective clients at a Burlington courthouse to hire her, prompting the Law Society of Upper Canada to obtain a permanent injunction barring her from providing legal services. Though Reyes went to law school, she is not licensed to practise law.

In one case, Reyes told a client who had retained her for a dispute before the tenant board to file a civil lawsuit against the landlord “for strategic purposes to create leverage to obtain a settlement,” according to records from the law society’s investigation.

In granting an injunction against Reyes, the judge said there was “ample evidence” that Reyes improperly presented herself as a lawyer and offered legal services in three separate incidents. In one case she charged $550 in cash for her work.

The judge rejected Reyes’ claim that she was exempt from the law society’s rules because she was a friend of the people she represented and, as such, was allowed to provide free legal advice.

She unsuccessfully tried to have the law society’s injunction set aside. She then sued the regulatory body, its lawyer and its investigator for nearly $21 million, accusing them of “maliciously intending to damage” her reputation and causing a “future income loss.”

A judge dismissed her lawsuit in 2015 and ordered her to pay costs.

Yet taking Reyes herself to court is not an easy task.

In March 2010, Alex Ragozzino, who knew Reyes professionally, sued her in Burlington small claims court in an attempt to recover about $6,600 he claimed Reyes owed him for promotional materials, made for an anti-bullying concert held in support of a not-for-profit organization founded by her son.

Reyes attempted to file a statement of defence a year later, but it was rejected because she missed the deadline to do so, Ragozzino said in an interview.

He was awarded a default judgment in June 2011, but more than five years later has yet to recover any money.

Ragozzino said the only way to find Reyes and serve her with documents was to follow her to court for unrelated matters. In Toronto alone, in the past five years, she has provided seven separate addresses on court and tribunal documents.

It wouldn’t matter if Reyes skipped a scheduled court hearing, Ragozzino said, adding that she kept getting new chances to appear. “It is ridiculous. I have no idea how many thousands of dollars have been spent, public money has been spent, dealing with this one person,” he told the Star.

It was a clear January afternoon in 2011 when Sandra Paldino spotted Reyes in a parking lot outside an Oakville Toys “R” Us.

The women knew each other: Paldino had taken Reyes — whom she knew as Ally Valitchka — to court in 2009 over money Paldino said she was owed for organizing the anti-bullying concert.

They spoke briefly, and Paldino turned and walked towards the toy store. Then she heard Reyes scream.

“I turned and saw her coming at me with her car,” Paldino later testified in court.

The car mounted the curb and pinned Paldino’s foot beneath a wheel.

“I was looking right at her. I was saying, ‘What are you doing?’” Paldino told the court.

“She was staring at me with a huge grin on her face.”

As witnesses gathered, Reyes said she had to get an ambulance and drove away. Reyes did call 911, but to report that she “had a woman just throw herself on my car.”

She returned to the scene an hour later on foot. As police arrested her, Reyes insisted she was the victim.

On Nov. 15, 2016, Judge Lesley Baldwin sentenced Reyes to nine months in jail for dangerous driving and failing to remain at the scene of a collision. Reyes had been in custody more than once prior to sentencing and, with time served, she was expected to spend another two months behind bars.

In convicting Reyes, Baldwin called her version of events “absurd” and described Reyes as a “dishonest witness.” The judge commented on Reyes’ “stunning lack of remorse and disregard for court orders” and said, in her opinion, Reyes was at high risk to reoffend.

“Ms. Reyes has long-standing problems with telling the truth and I am concerned that she has an underlying mental health condition such as anti-social personality disorder, or some other delusional disorder, that is driving this anti-social conduct in the community,” she said.

Last week, Reyes appealed the conviction and has been released.

On Thursday, outside a Toronto courtroom where she was representing herself on a separate criminal matter, Reyes told the Star she was willing to talk but only after all her matters before the court have been resolved.

She warned the Star to wait until then, too, or else.

“The minute you publish anything you’re getting sued.”