One of the enduring, not to mention expensive, bugbears for every local council is unmeritorious litigation from self-represented plaintiffs.
Regardless of their merits, such claims generally cost large sums of public money to defend. Winning them is often of little comfort to councils because the legal costs are usually not recoverable, as self-represented litigants rarely have the means to pay them.
Costs generally take two forms: hard costs from external legal counsel, and the indirect cost of the time spent by council's own legal and other staff.
It is understandable how such situations can arise. One of the principles of our legal system is that everyone should have fair access to “their day in court”. However, often it seems that the playing field is tilted unduly in favour of self-represented litigants.
