How to make a judge cross

You have to try really hard to get into trouble in the family court.   People lose sleep about filing a statement a day or two late but without asking themselves what will happen if they don’t comply exactly with a court direction or order.  Usually the answer is nothing, and of course that upsets and angers the law abiding people who do everything right while their ex flagrantly ignores what they’ve been ordered to do.

In a case in March a judge described the preparation for a case as ‘shocking’ and complained bitterly about statements that were filed late, were 10 and 11 pages long when the court had limited them to 6, and the bundle was over four times as long as ordered.  In another recent case the judge asked “Why is it fair for one party to follow the rules, but the other party to ignore them? Why is it fair for the complying party to be left with the feeling that the non-complying party has been able to adduce more evidence to his/her apparent advantage?”

Of course it’s not fair and people who are against a narcissist in the family court are all too well aware of how unfair it is, and how the court does nothing about it.  The judge went on to say “It should be understood that the deliberate flouting of orders, guidance and procedure is a form of forensic cheating, and should be treated as such. Advisers should clearly understand that such non-compliance may well be regarded by the court as professional misconduct leading to a report to their regulatory body.”  Note the words ‘it should be’ and ‘may well be’.  Of course it should be, but the fact remains it isn’t.   And there is no mention of what would happen to a litigant in person flouting the rules.  The judge may have a bit of a rant, as in this case, but usually that will be it.

So how far wrong do you have to go before the court will do anything about it?  Phillip Hartley was one of a very small minority who found out.  If you’re in family court proceedings you’ll know that they are private hearings and that you’re not allowed to record them. 

This is to protect the children involved.  Of course, if you were to record a hearing no-one would know unless you told them (or had your phone seized by the police!).  But last year Phillip Hartley posted on Facebook one of the documents filed in his proceedings and eight videos of his court hearings.  And he named his son in them.   This is contempt of court, for which you can go to prison.

Mr Hartley was an angry man who had been trying to secure contact with his son.  (Though at the same time it appears he was disputing his paternity as he asked for a DNA test which the mother refused.) He ran a parental alienation support group on Facebook and was clearly using his own case, and his illegal video recordings of his court hearings, to champion the cause of alienated fathers.  Thousands of people could have seen these videos and Mr Hartley was clearly more concerned with promoting his cause than about the effect on his own children and their mother.

He was ordered by the court, more than once, to remove the videos from Facebook and not to post any more.  And I can’t help wondering if he had just removed them whether he would have been punished at all for it.  But he didn’t.  And the Attorney General brought criminal proceedings for contempt of court, which didn’t go well either:  Mr Hartley refused to attend the hearings which kept being adjourned and he was eventually charged with contempt of court for that too.  He was advised several times that he was entitled to legal aid (because he was likely to lose his liberty) but he dismissed solicitors who bent over backwards trying to help him and wanted to speak – or rather shout – for himself.

Mr Hartley was eventually convicted in his absence and although he had been arrested before his sentencing hearing custody officers were unable to get him to court due to his “difficult behaviour”, including stripping himself naked.

Clients often tell me they are worried about ‘what they will look like’ if they do or say something ‘wrong’ in court.  My usual response is that it doesn’t matter what you look like, what matters is the outcome you get for your child and/or yourself.   The judge is there to make a decision and that is unlikely to be based on or influenced by anything you may do ‘wrong’.  But there are limits of course, and Phillip Hartley’s behaviour went well beyond those – I particularly liked the description of him using ‘high octane invective to insult both the Cafcass officer and the judge’.

The judge said: “I have every suspicion the defendant and others with similarly warped and irrational views about the family justice system in this country will regard the defendant as akin to a martyr …. “

The problem is that not all of his views about the family court are ‘warped and irrational’ though his behaviour certainly is.   One of the videos he posted was apparently dedicated to an alienated father who had committed suicide in 2018.  I can’t pretend this doesn’t happen: there are many wonderful, loving fathers who are totally unjustifiably alienated from their children and who the family court fails miserably to help.  But Phillip Hartley isn’t one of them – he is a violent criminal with many pages of previous convictions – and his behaviour hinders rather than helps other decent fathers.   This is a letter he sent to the district judge:

“I AM WRITING TO YOU AS THE MAN OF LIVING FLESH & BLOOD NOT MY LEGAL FICTIONAL IDENTITY MR. P. HARTLEY. I WRITE TO REMOVE MY CONSENT FROM ALL PROCEEDINGS INVOLVING MY SON (M) (I AM (M’s) FATHER). THE INCOMPETENCE OF THE COURT ADVISORY SERVICE IS NOT WHAT I SEE IN TH BEST INTEREST OF MY SON. I DO NOT CONSENT TO PARENTAL ALIENATION. MY FIRST COMMUNICATION WITH THIS COURT WAS 18/5/2020 WHERE I INITIALLY REMOVED MY APPLICATION, ANY ORDERS SINCE THEN ARE NULL AND VOID.”

The judge said: “I have a suspicion he has a personality defect, but much of what he exhibited to me appeared confected.  Certain it is, he does not lack competence to make decisions – even unwise ones – about this litigation”.

It is unfortunate that the judge labelled it as a ‘personality defect’ rather than a personality disorder, and it’s even more unfortunate that the behaviour of a disordered personality has to be this extreme before a court is capable of even suspecting it.

Mr Hartley was sent to prison for 10 months (which presumably means he served five) for his Facebook posts.  The judge said: “…..  I cannot ignore the way in which the defendant perpetrated the contempt with the use of extremely offensive invective directed towards the mother, a CAFCASS officer and a judge.”  That rather suggests to me he would have liked to ignore it and not send him to prison.

The judge then had to decide how to sentence him for refusing to attend the three court hearings.  The judge said if he had just been sentencing him for those contempts he would have sent him to prison for 28 days as he had ‘wilfully disobeyed orders of the court, and this has caused the court a high level of inconvenience.’  However, as he’d already given him 10 months he said he would ‘not add to the misery of the defendant’ by giving him any more.  He also ordered him to pay the costs of the criminal case amounting to £22,423.  But went on to say he assumed he was living on state benefits so the costs order was not to be enforced without the leave of the court.  In other words, he is never likely to pay them.

So next time you’re worried about doing something ‘wrong’ please remember Mr Hartley.  And don’t dwell on ‘what you look like’ either (that’s what narcissists do!) as the proceedings are unlikely to be about you.  They should be about your child, and the behaviour of the other parent.  Remember too that their bad behaviour in court proceedings is unlikely to be noticed, let alone punished.  But don’t let that stop you from noting it down.  Keep a meticulous spreadsheet of every little thing your ex does wrong (including the date and effect on your child) until you can show a pattern of behaviour.  And eventually you should be able to turn things around.

**** Breaking News ****

I’ve just seen on Twitter (courtesy of Daniel the Mouse in the Court!) that there is a similar case to Mr Hartley’s going on in the High Court now. Though I have to say this lady, who is said to have broken the law, is infinitely more polite. Her husband, a law professor and QC, is alleging that she broke court orders involving the ‘kidnap’ of 3 children, and by posting information about private court hearings on social media. He alleges there was a large number of textual and video postings on an Instagram account and it included the names of the children and their dates of birth, in breach of the court order. Unlike Mr Hartley, she had taken much of it down by January 2022.

Both of them are litigants in person and the wife appeared by video link as she is apparently abroad.  (So it will be interesting to see how that works if the judge decides to send her to prison.)  The hearing started with the wife demanding to know whether Ms Justice Judd knew of the “the 7 Nolan principles of public office”, insisting “you must have clean hands as a judge”. The judge responded: “I am of course going to uphold the law.”

Daniel then reports that: ‘This discussion was interrupted as W disappeared to answer the door: “Just bear with me, there’s someone at the door. Let me get rid of them…I’ve just got to do this hearing.” We were told this was her landlord requesting their screwdriver back.’

The wife asked her husband: “What is your relationship with Theresa Villiers MP?  The judge said “I don’t think that’s relevant”. Claiming that a “MI5 MI6 GCHQ agent” has interfered in her private life”, the wife said: “What I’m exposing is corruption and fraud within the judiciary”.

Ah, so now we know this is someone else on a crusade rather than being concerned with her own case.

She went on to ask her husband: “Can you confirm the last time we had sex for the record?” The judge interrupted saying: “you might want to know but I don’t want to know”. When the wife then asked: “Why shouldn’t you consume alcohol in front of the children” the judge told her “I’m not going to allow this hearing to become something that it’s not about.”  The wife’s response was: “Can you stop leading the court room because your job is to be impartial.”  She went on to say her husband was ordered to pay £2,500 per month and he hasn’t so “If you want to talk about contempt of court we’re looking in the wrong direction…Why is this man [H] above the law and who is protecting him?”

The court was told this is part of some freemason style plot to prevent exposure of paedophilia within the system and the wife continued in this vein talking about Prince Charles, Jimmy Saville, Epstein, etc.

Ms Justice Judd explained that if she finds the orders have been breached she would “like to give [W] a chance to reflect and be represented.” So she has presumably not ruled prison out. The wife said she is happy to represent herself. She claimed the orders she is accused of breaching are fraudulent and cited a Supreme Court case where ‘fraud unravels all’.  She added:  “I love the law and I love my country. I love freedom of speech. I will stop posting about corruption the day corruption ceases to happen. If anyone has been offended by what I have said, they are more than welcome to bring a defamation case against me.”

Hmm, it doesn’t sound as though she’s been watching Amber Heard and Johnny Depp.

Although not quite in the league of Philip Hartley, it sounds as though this lady may also have a personality disorder. Judgement is due to be given tomorrow …I’ll keep you posted.