early december i received a summons to appear before the costs court in the supreme court of victoria on the 11th of february 2014.
the proceeding was initiated by the victorian government solicitors office (vgso), on behalf of the attorney-general’s office, for taxation of costs thrown away by reason of the abandonment of ground 3 in the case of magee v delaney, as justice kyrou ordered that i pay.
the attorney-general’s vgso minions kindly served me a letter with a great offer by attending a magistrates’ court hearing on the 20th of august.
they offered me the opportunity to pay the a-g’s costs at $15,000 up front by a certain date and they’d call it square — i couldn’t resist sending an honest assessment of the situation via email (sending non-conventional emails must be one of the few pleasures that remains for me, how sad):
dear bruce,
i do not agree to quantification and payment of costs of $15,000 to be paid in full by 1st of october.
i do not have any money, i am currently unemployed (on disability support pension for depression), and continuing to cover over advertisements in much the same way that brought me to the supreme court in magee v delaney (as your office must be aware, delivering a letter to me by hand in the magistrates court).
perhaps your office will be intervening again when i take another case to the supreme court hoping to get a judge less openly hateful than justice kyrou, who ridiculously awarded these costs. if you proceed to taxation of costs and an enforcement of costs order you will only spend more money that will not be recovered.
i have no wages to garnish, and who knows, i might be in jail again soon.
if it ever came to it, i have no issues with declaring bankrupcy, apart from not wanting to bother with all the necessary bureaucracy.
i haven’t heard from the office of public prosecutions, whom i apparently owe the entire legal costs of their case — i guess they are a bit busier than you are at the victorian government solicitors office, or maybe they are just more experienced in the futility and wastefulness of trying to get blood from a stone.
i honestly couldn’t care less what you do from here on — i would be happy if you guys stopped bugging me, but i would also find it funny if you proceeded to waste more money in a vain attempt to extract money from me.
i’m in a win win situation, and i thought i was supposed to be a depressed loser.
i hope you have a lovely day bruce! (seriously, i bear no grudge against you personally, i guess someone is just pressuring you to do this anyway)
keep it legal,
kyle
so the a-g’s office decided to go ahead to taxation of costs (where they itemise and claim all the costs they are owed and have them officially signed off by a judge, or something like that) for reasons beyond my comprehension — perhaps because a-g also stands for absolute-goose.
here is the 23 page bill of costs, which apparently cost $2,376 to draw up (after $1,080 worth of revision) — for that kind of money they could have bought something better than a useless, never-even-remotely-likely-to-be-paid bill of costs — like a classy new monocle for the a-g, i think he’d look good with a monocle:
IMAGE COURTESY OF HERALD SUN. IMAGE DIGITALLY ALTERED BY A PROFESSIONAL ARTIST. NOTE: THIS IS NOT A REAL MONOCLE (DESPITE HOW AWESOME IT LOOKS).
damn, i was right, it looks so natural on him.
the total of the bill of costs is $32,169.03 (i bet they’ll round that 3 cents up to 5 too, the bastards).
from the time costs were awarded to when they’ll be finalised at the costs hearing they reckon they’ll have spent roughly another $9,000 (included in the $32,000 figure), which i am of course supposed to pay back, but never will or could — fucking idiots, they could be rolling in monocles.
some personal highlights from the bill of costs are:
at item 68: Attending conducting searches of Google main social media networks and white pages in an effort to locate address for Appellant – clerical – 36 minutes = $132
at item 83: Letter (email 5.31pm) to Attorney General’s representative advising all searches exhausted and remaining option to engage private investigator and seeking instructions – 2 folios = $129.60
both item 68 and 83 are part of the long and expensive process of trying to find out where i live, they could have gone to my website and emailed me, i’d have told them the same thing i did after they served me with the ‘offer’ at the magistrates court, and if they wanted to stupidly pursue costs then i’d have come and picked up their stupid bill of costs documents (the ones they charged me $5.06 for the printing of at item 111, plus $36 to pass the documents on to a process server (item 117) and an as yet unspecified fee from the process server (item 118)). i guess the private eyes they consulted (item 85, $72 to go have a yarn with them) quoted high because the trail was so cold and the vgso had already done all the googling one could possibly think of.
at items 97 & 98: 25/08/2013 Receiving and filing email from Appellant = $18.00, Perusing letter from Appellant advising he did not agree to quantify or pay costs as ordered = $54.00 (that’s the letter to bruce i included above, 18 bucks to receive and file it? surely receiving an email doesn’t cost anything, that must be some expensive filing — they must file them on a usb stick that is then gently laid on a bed of caviar and placed in a refrigerated filing cabinet or something. i guess if any of you read that email above i owe you $54 in ‘perusing’ fees, sorry, i’m notoriously insolvent and all my debts are terribly insalubrious)
these government functionaries had a ‘conference’ (at item 100 they charged me $288 for it) to decide what to do after receiving my email which only told them what legal aid had told them months ago – i wasn’t going to pay and i was totally unable to pay – i guess you would need an expensive conference of professionals to come up with such an intelligent course of action.
they also itemise a lot of research into whether or not they could get legal aid (already financially fucked due to lack of government funding) to foot the bill even though i declined to apply for indemnity from costs (which would have meant legal aid would have to pay) — they didn’t try to charge me for that research, which makes me wonder why they put it in at all, just to clarify that they hate legal aid? okay, we get it.
i just can’t imagine how great it would feel to have done all the work on this ‘case’ — congratulations to all those brave vgso workers for not throwing themselves through their 26th floor office windows.
