The chairman of a group of companies who has vowed to initiate legal proceedings against some of his own shareholders, and has promised to sue the administrators of one of his insolvent businesses has been banned from raising actions in any Scottish court since 2006 when he was branded a vexatious litigant.
Martin Frost, head of Avocet Natural Capital and its many subsidiaries, informed the Group's 650 shareholders on Friday of his intention to go to law in pursuit of criminal and civil complaints.
He wrote: "On Thursday, 18th June 2020, Police Scotland advised me that their report to the Procurator Fiscal was pending and it was now OK for Avocet to proceed with further criminal complaints (involving some £1.5 million of theft & fraud against Avocet) and bring civil actions (amounting to over £5 million in loss and damages).
"Most regrettably such actions will again fall upon my wife’s family and some other Avocet shareholders. A resume of these complaints including the current conspiracy and badmouthing charges against their acolytes and publicists will be forwarded to you, Avocet’s owners, for this Monday 22nd June 2020.
"For the avoidance of doubt: on Monday 22nd June, 2020, prior
to service of further criminal complaints and civil actions, Avocet owners
shall be advised against whom and for what such actions shall be taken –
regrettably the naming of names does include some Avocet shareholders who have
sought to rob and defraud their fellow shareholders along with Orr publicists and
their purported Administrators of Orrdone Farms Limited."
Earlier this year joint administrators Jeanette Brown, of Dodd & Company, and Emma Porter, of accountants Aver were appointed to take control of Orrdone Farms which has debts in excess of £3.5 million. Their initial report to creditors indicated it had been extremely difficult to obtain adequate and up to date financial information about the company's affairs.
In a previous shareholders' letter dated March 15th Mr Frost declared: "I regret a mischievous and erroneous report by the
Administrators of Orrdone Farms Limited was published on 13th March 2020 in
which Avocet’s £10 million plus development support of Scottish farming was
ignored & negated. Legal action against the Administrators shall flow."
And as recently as May 30th the Avocet chairman warned "I and Avocet will sue (named individual) and all her
acolytes. In May alone, my family spent over £95,000 on private enquiry agents,
lawyers, and counsel to bring these people to book – from collected evidence,
we shall obtain justice from this irresponsible bad mouthing."
Mr Frost is one of eleven individuals on Scotland's list of vexatious litigants. His inclusion followed a petition to the Court of Session by Lord Advocate James Wolffe which was granted by a panel of three judges in November 2006.
Mr Wolffe, the petitioner, sought an order which meant "no
legal proceedings shall be instituted by the respondent [Mr Frost] in the Court of
Session, Sheriff Court or any other inferior court unless the respondent first
obtains leave of a judge sitting in the Outer House of the Court of Session,
having satisfied such a judge that such legal proceedings are not vexatious and
that there is a prima facie ground for such proceedings".
The Lord Advocate claimed:“The respondent has habitually and
persistently instituted vexatious legal proceedings without any reasonable
ground for doing so. He has sought to use legal process
for reasons unconnected with the issues in the case. His conduct of proceedings
has involved the court and other parties in unnecessary procedure, time and
expense.
"Judges have repeatedly commented adversely on his written pleadings
and oral submissions. The respondent has been sequestrated and parties who
succeed in obtaining an award of expenses against him have little prospect of
recovering those expenses. ...".
In his response Mr Frost claimed that, in his opinion,
"the petition paints an unrepresentative, contradictory and often
factually incorrect or distorted picture".
In his written judgement, Lord Osborne explained: "The respondent addressed us at length. At times his
submissions were coherent, at others they were rambling and incomprehensible to
anyone not possessing an encyclopaedic knowledge of his own affairs. He
persistently addressed us at length upon matters which were plainly irrelevant
to the issues arising in this petition.
"The respondent went on to describe in minute detail the
background to the raising of those proceedings. In doing so he observed that,
in the last twenty five years, he had been involved in more than 500
litigations, ten per cent of which had been in Scotland. The remainder had been
raised in England, in the European Union, in the United States of America and
in Canada."
The judge said Mr Frost had also criticised a number of individuals; "a
number of members of the legal profession whom he had encountered could not be
described as honest.
"In connection with a number of problems related to such
persons the respondent had been advised to go to the police. He stated that in
fact he had been in contact with the Metropolitan Police and had been
interviewed in connection with the "cash for peerages" inquiry, which
he appeared to consider relevant to the task that we had to perform."
Lord Osborne said in all the circumstances, having regard to the conduct of
the respondent, amply demonstrated in the litigations which formed the basis of
the application, the judges were wholly satisfied that the appropriate course was for them to exercise their discretion by making the order sought.
"In reaching this
conclusion we have been particularly influenced by the fact that the respondent
has made a practice of taking assignations from other persons of their
interests in claims or litigations, upon that basis then proceeding to have
himself sisted as a party to those litigations, and then practising his own
particular brand of advocacy.
"That has involved the making of reckless and
unfounded allegations, the wholly unnecessary prolongation of legal proceedings
by the exploration of the legally irrelevant, the subjection of his opponents
to the trouble and expense of countering his allegations, with little hope of
any remedy becoming available to them, in practice, through an award of
expenses, on account of the fact that the respondent has been sequestrated, and
the diversion of scarce public resources in the court system to the
investigation of groundless claims. Accordingly we shall grant the prayer of
the petition."
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