The Supreme Court dismissed an application by a private individual for leave to seek a vexatious litigant restriction order against a family member under s 4 of the Vexatious Proceedings Restriction Act 2002 (WA). On the facts, the court found that most of the ten proceedings relied upon were not vexatious — being attributable to a self-represented litigant's procedural errors and legitimate (though unsuccessful) estate claims — and that at most only a final group of three proceedings in the Magistrates Court may have been vexatious. Even assuming those proceedings were vexatious, the court declined to exercise its discretion to grant leave, holding the threshold for this 'extreme remedy' had not been reached, though it expressly warned that further proceedings by the respondent could quickly change that assessment.
The full text is available to signed-in members.