Michael (of Bernicia) Waugh, UK bankster-buster

[Burnaby49]

A man I have known for ten years has used the TGBMS Grounds to completely turn around the fortunes of another friend’s defence of a void mortgage possession claim.

In folklore studies, this would be regarded as a FOAFtale (Friend Of A Friend), better known as an urban legend. Always characterized by the lack of verifiable details, and degree of separation between teller and tale.

The people I follow rely heavily on this literary device. Robert Menard was always going on about something that a lawyer at a barbeque told him or that a policeman told him that he was legally right. Keith Lawson's "evidence" at trial was largely of this nature, a nurse somewhere told him something about the level of health care wherever he was at the time, some other unidentified person told him about the abysmal state of health care in British Columbia prisons. He seemed to believe that these statements actually constituted real evidence at trial.

[notorial dissent]

Ah yes, the good old tried and true FOAF unimpeachable source, works every time - NOT.

[longdog]

Ah yes, the good old tried and true FOAF unimpeachable source, works every time - NOT.

FOAF is nowhere near as reliable as SBITP* or IRIS**

* Some Bloke In The Pub
** I Read It Somewhere

[notorial dissent]

Ah yes, the good old tried and true FOAF unimpeachable source, works every time - NOT.

FOAF is nowhere near as reliable as SBITP* or IRIS**

* Some Bloke In The Pub
** I Read It Somewhere on the internet

FIFU

[longdog]

I am indebted to m'learned friend.

[notorial dissent]

[aesmith]

** I Read It Somewhere on the internetFIFU

I sometimes wonder if they can actually read. Youtube seems to be treated as the highest authority. For example on the Crab's group ...

Can someone please advise me .. how do I get these guys off my back .. I totally dont understand the system .. I went into dept management but came out of it when I watched a few things on YouTube ..
Any advice would be greatly appreciated .. I can't loose my wages and I'm lost

So on advice from Youtube, even though she "totally" doesn't understand, she's lost the protection of whatever scheme she was in, now has a Charge for Payment and arrestment of bank account and wages.

[SoLongCeylon]

The GBMS Cinema on Demand platform is being renamed : TGBMS Cinema No Demand

IIRC there has only been 3 screenings where enough tickets have been sold the proceed with the viewing.

The recent schedules have not been selling minimum numbers and are just quietly dropped. New listings are re scheduled as new upcoming events.

On the cinema website you can find out how many tickets are actually sold for each event as well as the minimum required to go ahead.

For what has been described as the most talked about British documentary ever and has the establishment quaking, current ticket sales are as follows

Bristol 4
Streatham (london ) 2
Liverpool 2
Islington ( London ) 15
Bournmouth 2
Leicester 2
Kirkstall 2
Manchester 2

No tickets have sold since Sunday when I last checked
These numbers speak for themselves

[notorial dissent]

Stunning numbers!!!!

[Gregg]

Sales not seen since the touring days of The Beatles*!

*We're not saying sales compared to The Beatles, its actually compared to sales to see "Martin Woozzle and the Keems" who toured at the exact same time frame as The Beatles from 1963, till 1966. The almost sold out bar mitzvahs in Islington, drew a crowd of 7 on free beer night at a pub in Notts and Martin's entire family of, well all of his parents but one anyway, showed up for his triumphant return engagement to her basement on the very day John, Paul, George and Ringo were playing their last scheduled live show in San Francisco.

[Penny Wise]

In reply to the claims of success made by Michael about people using his method to win, I say this:

Campbell v Redstone Mortgages Ltd [2014] EWHC 3081 (Ch) (29 September 2014)

79.On 8 September 2014, three days before the start of this trial, Miss Campbell issued a new claim number A30LS606 seeking a without notice interim injunction alleging that the mortgage had not been validly executed in the presence of a witness who attested her signature contrary to s.1(3) of the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989 and relying on a recent decision of Judge Behrens dated 21 July 2014, Bank of Scotland Plc v Waugh & others [2014] EWHC 2117 (Ch). Miss Campbell asked that the possession proceedings be struck out and the Possession Order set aside. Mr Brown and Miss Campbell appeared before Judge Gosnell on a without notice application on 8 September. Judge Gosnell dismissed the application for a without notice injunction and adjourned the rest of the application to be heard at this trial starting on 11 September.

106. As mentioned above in paragraph 79, Mr Brown referred me to a recent decision of Judge Behrens dated 21 July 2014, Bank of Scotland Plc v Waugh & others [2014] EWHC 2117 (Ch) and submitted that the facts of that case are indistinguishable from the present case, with the result that no estoppel can arise and the mortgage in this case has to be set aside. I cannot accept that submission. There is a clear distinction between the facts in Waugh and the facts in this case. This case, similar to the Shah case, concerns a document purporting to be a deed regular on its face in that it appears that Miss Campbell's signature was attested by a witness. Miss Campbell's allegation is that the witness was not in fact present when the mortgage was signed and thus the formalities of s.1(3) of the 1989 Act were not complied with. As Judge Behrens pointed out at §72 in Waugh, that situation is factually different from a situation where the document has no attestation clause at all and is thus not even regular on its face (which was the position in Waugh and in Briggs v Gleeds [2014] EWHC (Ch) 1178, a recent decision of Newey J).

107. Accordingly, for the above reasons, claim number A30LS606 issued on 8 September 2014 must be struck out. Miss Campbell has no grounds for setting aside the mortgage.

[Penny Wise]

Bank of Scotland Plc v Waugh & Ors [2014] EWHC 2117 (Ch) (21 July 2014)

69. Shah v Shah concerned the enforceability of a document under the terms of which the defendants were to make a payment of £1.5 million to the claimant. The document was described as a deed and provided for each defendant to sign in the presence of a witness. In the event, although the "witness" signed shortly after the defendants, he did so without having been present when they signed. When, therefore, the claimant brought proceedings against them, the defendants disputed the claim on the basis that the "deed" had not been validly executed. The Court of Appeal, however, concluded that the defendants were estopped from denying that they had signed the document in the witness's presence. Pill LJ, with whom the other members of the Court agreed, said (at paragraph 33) that "the delivery of the document … involved a clear representation that it had been signed by the … defendants in the presence of the witness and had, accordingly, been validly executed by them as a deed"[1].

70. Pill LJ's reasoning can be seen in paragraphs 29 – 32 of his judgment:

"29 I bear in mind the clarity of the language of section 1(2) and (3) and also that the requirement for attestation is integral to the requirement for signature in that the validity of the signature is stipulated to depend on the presence of the attesting witness. I also accept that attestation has a purpose in that it limits the scope for disputes as to whether the document was signed and the circumstances in which it was signed. The beneficial effect of the requirement for attestation of the signature in the manner specified in the statute is not in question. It gives some, but not complete, protection to other parties to the deed who can have more confidence in the genuineness of the signature by reason of the attestation. It gives some, but not complete, protection to a potential signatory who may be under a disability, either permanent or temporary. A person may aver in opposition to his own deed that he was induced to execute it by fraud, misrepresentation or, as was unsuccessfully alleged in the present case, duress and the attestation requirement is a safeguard.

30 I have, however, come to the conclusion that there was no statutory intention to exclude the operation of an estoppel in all circumstances or in circumstances such as the present. The perceived need for formality in the case of a deed requires a signature and a document cannot be a deed in the absence of a signature. I can detect no social policy which requires the person attesting the signature to be present when the document is signed. The attestation is at one stage removed from the imperative out of which the need for formality arises. It is not fundamental to the public interest, which is in the requirement for a signature. Failure to comply with the additional formality of attestation should not in itself prevent a party into whose possession an apparently valid deed has come from alleging that the signatory should not be permitted to rely on the absence of attestation in his presence. It should not permit a person to escape the consequences of an apparently valid deed he has signed, representing that he has done so in the presence of an attesting witness, merely by claiming that in fact the attesting witness was not present at the time of signature. The fact that the requirements are partly for the protection of the signatory makes it less likely that Parliament intended that the need for them could in all circumstances be used to defeat the claim of another party.

31 Having regard to the purposes for which deeds are used and indeed in some cases required, and the long-term obligations which deeds will often create, there are policy reasons for not permitting a party to escape his obligations under the deed by reason of a defect, however minor, in the way his signature was attested. The possible adverse consequences if a signatory could, months or years later, disclaim liability upon a purported deed, which he had signed and delivered, on the mere ground that his signature had not been attested in his presence, are obvious. The lack of proper attestation will be peculiarly within the knowledge of the signatory and, as Sir Christopher Slade observed in the course of argument, will often not be within the knowledge of the other parties.

32 In this case the document was described as a deed and was signed. A witness, to whom the third and fourth defendants were well known, provided a form of attestation shortly afterwards and the only failure was that he did so without being in the presence of the third and fourth defendants when they signed."

74.In paragraph 40 of his judgment he analysed the effect of Pill LJ's judgment:

40. It is evident from Shah v Shah that there are circumstances in which a person can be estopped from denying that a document was executed in accordance with the requirements of section 1 of the 1989 Act. It is also apparent from Pill LJ's judgment that attestation is less crucial than signature. On the other hand, Pill LJ did not decide that estoppel can be used in response to every sort of failure to comply with the 1989 Act. To the contrary, he expressed his conclusion narrowly: he was unable to detect a statutory intention "totally" to exclude the operation of an estoppel in relation to the application of section 1 or to exclude it "in present circumstances". It seems fair, moreover, to infer that Pill LJ would not have considered estoppel applicable if the defendants had not even signed the "deed". In Pill LJ's view, "a document cannot be a deed in the absence of a signature" and the public interest lies in the requirement for a signature.

75.In paragraph 43 he held that there was no estoppel on the facts of the case:

43. In the end, I have concluded that estoppel cannot be invoked where a document does not even appear to comply with the 1989 Act on its face or, at any rate, cannot be so invoked in the circumstances of the present case. My reasons include these:

i) To state the obvious, Parliament has decided that, for an individual validly to execute a deed, he must sign "in the presence of a witness who attests the signature". That requirement has an evidential purpose: as Pill LJ noted in Shah v Shah, it "limits the scope for disputes as to whether the document was signed and the circumstances in which it was signed" and "gives some, but not complete, protection to other parties to the deed who can have more confidence in the genuineness of the signature by reason of the attestation". As Pill LJ further noted, the requirement also "gives some, but not complete, protection to a potential signatory who may be under a disability, either permanent or temporary". The Law Commission thought, too, that the need for attestation would "emphasise to the person executing the deed the importance of his act" (see paragraph 8.3(i) of the Law Commission's Working Paper No 93: Transfer of Land: Formalities for Deeds and Escrows (1985));

ii) Fulfilment of Parliament's and the Law Commission's objectives would be undermined, potentially to a serious extent, if estoppel could be invoked in circumstances such as those in the present case;

iii) Shah v Shah shows, of course, that a person can sometimes be estopped from denying due attestation. The document with which the Court was concerned in that case appeared, however, to be valid. Accordingly, Pill LJ said that failure to comply with the formality of attestation should not in itself prevent a party into whose possession "an apparently valid deed" has come from alleging that the signatory should not be permitted to rely on the absence of attestation in his presence. He also spoke of "an apparently valid deed" in the next sentence of his judgment;

iv) The "deeds" at issue in the present case are not "apparently valid". It can be seen from each document that it was not executed in accordance with the 1989 Act. This distinction from Shah v Shah is a significant one. If estoppel can be invoked in relation to documents that are not "apparently valid", the documents cannot necessarily be taken at face value. "[A]s far as possible," however, "it should be clear on the face of the document whether or not it has been validly witnessed" (see paragraph 8.3(i) of the Law Commission working paper). That is especially so since the validity of a deed can matter for many years, and those considering "deeds" long after they have been executed may well have no personal knowledge of the circumstances in which they were executed and access to little or no contemporary correspondence;

v) If estoppel were available in circumstances such as those in the present case, a party to a "deed" who had not himself executed the document in accordance with section 1 of the 1989 Act could choose whether or not the document should be treated as valid. If it turned out to be in his interests to disavow the document, he could do so. If, on the other hand, the document proved to be advantageous to him, he could invoke estoppel. To take an example close to the facts of the present case, if a "deed" provided for a pension scheme to become money purchase rather than final salary, an employer who had signed without having his signature witnessed could wait and see whether the change was, in the event, beneficial to him;

vi) Section 1 of the 1989 Act was in part designed to achieve certainty. It could, however, have the opposite consequence if estoppel were available in circumstances such as those in the present case. The effectiveness of a "deed" that had not, on the face of it, been validly executed could be left in doubt.

[Penny Wise]

To summarise, Bank of Scotland Plc v Waugh & Ors [2014] EWHC 2117 (Ch) (21 July 2014) will only assist those where their mortgage deed does not have an attestation clause.

As confirmed by
Shah v Shah & Anor [2001] EWCA Civ 527 (10 April 2001)
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2001/527.html
and
Campbell v Redstone Mortgages Ltd [2014] EWHC 3081 (Ch) (29 September 2014)
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2014/3081.html

A signature that is not witnessed, at the time that it is made will not in itself render the deed void

Michael's own case defeats all of his own arguments on this matter

[AnOwlCalledSage]

Thanks for that. In the absence of detail from the charlatan I have been mystified as to what fool proof system he was expecting to employ and you've laid it out quite clearly. It's "lie about the deed being witnessed" isn't it?

He's a moron.

[notorial dissent]

Didn't Waugh also pretty much say that taking the "mortgage" money and buying the property created the equity charge despite the defect and that it was therefore valid and enforceable? So no safe haven for the scammers.

[Comrade Sharik]

To summarise, Bank of Scotland Plc v Waugh & Ors [2014] EWHC 2117 (Ch) (21 July 2014) will only assist those where their mortgage deed does not have an attestation clause.

I second the Owl's thanks. I knew MoB must be talking bollocks, but don't have the expertise to see exactly how.

[aesmith]

To summarise, Bank of Scotland Plc v Waugh & Ors [2014] EWHC 2117 (Ch) (21 July 2014) will only assist those where their mortgage deed does not have an attestation clause.

And indeed not really assist all that much either. It's a bit bizarre that he cites his own case without mentioning that after finding his deed void the court went on to order a new deed to be signed, and the bank took possession of his property. Not really much of a win. So that's the first of the TGBMS "grounds" dealt with.

Anyone feel like posting up cases dealing with his other two grounds?

2. There is no mortgage contract containing the signatures of both the mortgagor and the
mortgagee, along with the terms and conditions, in a single document.
or
3. The mortgage deed was executed by the mortgagor before they owned the property concerned

I thought I'd seen one referring to (3) but I can't find it just now. A number of people have unsuccessfully raised (2) with the FOS.

[Tevildo]

3. The mortgage deed was executed by the mortgagor before they owned the property concerned

I thought I'd seen one referring to (3) but I can't find it just now. A number of people have unsuccessfully raised (2) with the FOS.

Possibly Abbey National v Cann [1990] UKHL 3 (29 March 1990)?

[A] purchaser who can only complete the transaction by borrowing money for the security of which he is contractually bound to grant a mortgage to the lender eo instante with the execution of the conveyance in his favour cannot in reality ever be said to have acquired even for a scintilla temporis the unencumbered fee simple or leasehold interest in land whereby he could grant interests having priority over the mortgage.

[hucknallred]

Blimey, he's not happy.

12 hrs ·

NOTICE TO GORDON HEWITT

You are hereby served notice that you have 24 hours to take down every malicious, defamatory and dishonest post you have ever made about my character, work and integrity, on every online platform, including [without limitation] Quatloos.

Failure to do so, for any reason whatsoever, will result in any and all necessary steps to restrain you from committing further malicious falsehoods, hate speech and harassment.

Should you make any more comments on any of my social media pages, you will be charged £1,500 for every deleted post, nunc-pro-tunc.

You have been warned. Heed it, or pay the consequences of your civil and criminal offences.

[Siegfried Shrink]

It's gotta be right, it's got a nunc pro tunc in it.