£25,000 — an expensive review. Totally the chaps fault for defaulting though, should have just shown up.
> I didn't lie in my review of Sommerfield Browne and them suing their own client for gain shows everyone what they are.
> Their friends and family will back them up, as will the other lawyers.
> I submitted my case based on written law and the judge said it did not apply to me and ordered me to omit the law from my submission, before the trial hearing.
> The fact is the judge put £6,000 costs on me before the case was even heard - I was literally priced out of justice. I could not attend or I would be accepting these costs. I cannot fight a rich solicitor in front of a biased judge. Seeing there was no justice here I decided not to give the court legitimacy by attending.
His understanding of the costs is wrong anyway.
Which is yet another point against the justice system. If a regular person being accused cannot understand things nor can they afford someone who does... hiw can they defend themselves?
They mostly can't in the US - our justice system relies heavily on coercive plea bargaining. People like Shanta Sweatt[0] plead guilty because the alternative is to face a much longer potential sentence at trial.
90+%[0][1] (94% of convictions at the state level, 97% at the federal level) of cases go through plea bargaining and never reach a courtroom.
I've also heard from a judge that people who represent themselves are often mentally ill.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/innocen...
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/prisons-are-packed-bec...
I wonder what this means? I don't fully trust that guy to accurately summarize issues of law.
- the guy has been led astray by internet law and is some kind of "sovereign citizen" or similar lunatic, in which case nothing he says should be taken at face value
- he genuinely has been mistreated, and is now incredibly paranoid of lawyers and unwilling to seek representation
- he got a quote for representation and an estimate of the possible losses, probably in the six figure range, and decided to cut his losses as quickly as possible
(also, the use of UK libel law to bully people into silence over basically correct points has been a serious problem)
Isn't that the whole point of a site like TrustPilot and of reviews in general?
Does this mean everyone who has ever received a negative review now has grounds to sue for defamation?
A defence against defamation is evidence that the accusations are true. Did the judge even check?
A defence against libel is that the accusations are true, but if you don't submit any evidence to support that, the judge's job isn't to try to prove that you were telling the truth for you.
Maybe, but unless they have a spare six-figure sum lying around they don't have the material capability to sue for libel. It's incredibly expensive. The sheer cost of the law makes it ineffective .. except when protecting the privileged. Or, in this case, since it's a firm of solicitors, they can represent themselves effectively.