Leigh Ravenscroft

[exiledscouser]

Well I don't know if this counts as a reliable source (well OK it is piss-poor) but our very own Neelu posted this 28th July on her FB. She was banging on about a 2013 case involving a victory of a man named Nigel Moore over British Waterways Board as if it has set some sort of precedent which might assist "Cockroach" Ravenscroft. There is a video upthread of Leigh and his steadfast advisor and legal genius Ceylon confronting the cops as the former's boat was plucked from the water and carted off somewhere.

If the following is to be believed however, all did not go well for Mr. Ravenscroft, oh no, not very well at all;

So why oh why has a single Judge Asplin, in the lower court, the Rolls building in London, on 24 July 2017, just ordered costs in a similar case of the local council extorting mooring licence fees, with costs in the sum of £80,000 in favour of Shoesmiths solicitors, Newark & Sherwood County Council & Enforcement officers and the haulage and storage companies that stole his riverboat in Jan 2015 in the case of Leigh Ravenscroft V Canal & River Trust ???

If that is right then the value of the boat in question will just about cover the £80k claret bill for m'learned friends. Another total victory !!!11!!!

It'll have been trebles all round at Shoesmiths - kerching!

[Penny Wise]

Ravenscroft v Canal And River Trust [2017] EWHC 1874 (Ch) (24 July 2017)

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2017/1874.html

[exiledscouser]

Well waddya know, Neelu was right!

[Penny Wise]

Well waddya know, Neelu was right!

Even a broken clock is right twice a day

[exiledscouser]

As loser in this round of litigation Leigh will be liable for the other side's costs. All of them.

Now I'm no taxation expert but looking at the judgement and the three days of hearing evidence, I'm betting that Mr. Christopher Stoner QC does not come cheap. Or even work pro-bono. Shoesmiths and the CRT must have thought that they were on *ahem* solid ground or they wouldn't have taken the risk. Ravenscroft seems to have hitched his case onto the no doubt knowledgable but, ultimately and however enthusiastically, amateurish Mr Moore to their joint ruin. It must count as sweet revenge as Nigel Moore defeated the eminent Queen's Counsel in his own case linked above.

Although Ravenscroft appears to have already paid quite some cash to the CRT to get his boat back, this is gonna hurt, financially. I think Neelu has let the cat out of the bag with her mention of £80,000.

The boat was said to be with about £26k so by my reckoning that's a triple Crawford in terms of the overall loss expressed as function of the asset.

Others may have lost more but this must qualify, pro-rata as one of Ceylon's finest achievements.

[Hercule Parrot]

Shoesmiths and the CRT must have thought that they were on *ahem* solid ground or they wouldn't have taken the risk.

Perhaps so. Or perhaps they were prepared to risk a modest sum (in their budgetary context) to defend their expansive view of their rights to tax and licence the widest possible range of boats.

Although Ravenscroft appears to have already paid quite some cash to the CRT to get his boat back, this is gonna hurt, financially. I think Neelu has let the cat out of the bag with her mention of £80,000. The boat was said to be with about £26k so by my reckoning that's a triple Crawford in terms of the overall loss expressed as function of the asset.

Yes, a painful lesson. I think his key error was to ignore the demands for licencing described in paras 15 - 19. BWB/CRT sent 8 or 9 separate notices or letters, some affixed to the boat and others posted to Ravenscroft's last known address. This went on for over 2 years, but he arrogantly ignored them all (encouraged by his GOOFY friends) and only responded too late after they seized his boat.

There is (was) a valid legal point about what parts of the waterways are within the CRT's jurisdiction and what types of craft they have licencing powers for. If Ravenscroft had raised these arguments earlier he might still have been unsuccessful, but for a far lesser cost. However we all know that he wasn't motivated by high principles of law, he was just following the FMOTL ethos. And so he fully deserves the Triple Crawford (Maritime) Award.

[He Who Knows]

So Leigh lost to "the pirates". Hopefully that means we don't have to suffer any more Youtube vids like this one...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zubt80e ... e=youtu.be

[Burnaby49]

At 2'48

Leigh - I've got them in the High Court on Thursday.

Tom Crawford - You've already won!

Leigh - Well I got my boat back like about two months after the case. What I did, I paid 'em under protest and duress 8,000 pounds and they returned me boat. Then what I did I filed a case in the High Court in London.

So another restounding full Crawford victory! Pay all of the court awarded costs against you and you get your seized property back! Then file another dead on arrival case to get yourself another set of costs you have to pay. Rinse, cycle, repeat until you are Rheka Patel.

What am I saying? He can't lose, he has a MacKenzie Friend!

[Penny Wise]

So Leigh lost to "the pirates". Hopefully that means we don't have to suffer any more Youtube vids like this one...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zubt80e ... e=youtu.be

I was hoping to watch the win video

[hucknallred]

So Leigh lost to "the pirates". Hopefully that means we don't have to suffer any more Youtube vids like this one...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zubt80e ... e=youtu.be

There was a comment on there saying he'd lost. Colon has deleted it.

[rumpelstilzchen]

I was hoping to watch the win video

You are forgetting that there are two final steps to be undertaken before any announcement can be made. First the judgment has to be shipped to Mr Ebert for forensic analysis and, with the aid of his microscope, he will examine every comma, full stop and apostrophe contained within the judgment. Then, by applying his expert legal knowledge, he will be able to show everyone that Ravenscroft actually won his case. Secondly, and don't forget this is the most important step, Colon has to tell every doubtershill FIFTEEN TIMES!!!!1!!!! that Ravenscroft won. Then, and only then, will we see the success video.

[exiledscouser]

So Leigh lost to "the pirates". Hopefully that means we don't have to suffer any more Youtube vids like this one...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zubt80e ... e=youtu.be

There was a comment on there saying he'd lost. Colon has deleted it.

This video is from June and shows Leigh and Colon in confident mood, assured of victory, result bound to be in our favour.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=52VIF9gAOUE

There is absolutely NO DISSENT OR DISCUSSION allowed that doesn't fit the "Freemasons/joos are all behind this and everything else" narrative in the comments section in any of Colon's tiresome videos.

What now I wonder.

Will Haining in the interest of balance do a piece to camera and acknowledge this defeat? Or at least do a rant about the iniquities of the courts?

Will the Cockroach crawl off and accept this or will he double down, appeal and take the costs issue to a whole new level?

Does he have any other assets other than Floaty McFloatface to lose here?

Leigh's McKenzie friend Mr. Moore (who took on and defeated Mr. Stoner QC in his own case against the C&RT) found his opponent far better prepared this time. I've said it before but here again is the old adage in action:

professionals are expensive, amateurs doubly so.

Could Leigh seek to recover anything from his McKenzie Friend for crap representation or does the buck stop with him? Having read the judgement again It was probably unwise to place reliance on the Treaty of Marlborough 1682 or whenever it was.

[rumpelstilzchen]

Will Haining in the interest of balance

Do you see what you did wrong there?

[ArthurWankspittle]

Could Leigh seek to recover anything from his McKenzie Friend for crap representation or does the buck stop with him?

Don't think you can do anything about a McKenzie Friend. If you were to sue them, you have the problem of what the US calls "clean hands". "Yes I know you aren't a lawyer but you said you knew something about the law and I asked you to be a McKenzie friend because I thought you believed the same (crap) as I do."

[TheNewSaint]

perhaps they were prepared to risk a modest sum (in their budgetary context) to defend their expansive view of their rights to tax and licence the widest possible range of boats.

And against the courtroom equivalent of the Washington Generals.

IANAL (especially not a UK lawyer), but my cynical side thinks they saw an opportunity to gain a positive ruling about the scope of their rights. Could they cite this case as precedent in a later such dispute?

[exiledscouser]

Raconteur news has a long chat with Leigh following his recent victory in which he admits that the legal bill was in fact an eye watering £90 Grand. All over what started out as a refusal to pay about £1,600 in mooring fees.

https://raconteursnews.com/tag/leigh-ravenscroft/

If you have to suffer through there is a special guest half way through, old Crawfraud himself. He's something of a broken record...blah fraud...drone corrupt...bore conspiracy. Tom has a cunning plan which he can't discuss but which will leave him with final victory.

Leigh appears to be cut from the same cloth as TC as he bemoans his "watertight case" ending so badly, corrupt judge, criminal perjury yadda yadda.

But he's going to appeal, oh yes. And win this time. Then they'll allllll be sorry.

I wonder how he's funding all this.

Some courts will insist on applicants lodging fees in advance of litigation. This will now become his life's obsession to its ruin.

[Siegfried Shrink]

It is called 'security for costs'.

Grounds for appeal would have to based on an error in law by the judge, I think, and I do not think any appeal would be other than foredoomed.

[Chaos]

Will Haining in the interest of balance

Do you see what you did wrong there?

[Hercule Parrot]

Leigh's McKenzie friend Mr. Moore (who took on and defeated Mr. Stoner QC in his own case against the C&RT) found his opponent far better prepared this time. I've said it before but here again is the old adage in action:

professionals are expensive, amateurs doubly so.

Could Leigh seek to recover anything from his McKenzie Friend for crap representation or does the buck stop with him? Having read the judgement again It was probably unwise to place reliance on the Treaty of Marlborough 1682 or whenever it was.

I do not think it would be right to blame Nigel Moore. By my limited reading, he appears to be a principled campaigner for the rights of 'small-fry' river & canal users. They believe that the CRT is imposing more onerous regulations and taxes upon them, perhaps with the aim of gentrifying the waterways for commercialised leisure uses. Moore was a victim of this himself*, and became a remarkable self-taught advocate.

I do not think Moore is Ravenscroft's "friend" in any other sense than McKenzie, there is no hint anywhere of him being sympathetic to FMOTL nonsense. He simply believes that the CRT's creeping over-reach needs to be checked and challenged. As the CRT rightly observed, whilst unsuccessfully trying to get Moore excluded from the Ravenscroft case, he wasn't merely interested in Ravenscroft's particular dispute but has a wider agenda.

I admit to some admiration of Nigel Moore in general terms (never met him, and don't own a boat). It is obviously preferable that these difficult questions of regulation v tradition are managed through careful, considered debate in a courtroom. Better to have a dozen Nigel Moores than one Ammon Bundy.

(* http://www.bargee-traveller.org.uk/publ ... pril-2013/)

[ArthurWankspittle]

I do not think it would be right to blame Nigel Moore. By my limited reading, he appears to be a principled campaigner for the rights of 'small-fry' river & canal users. They believe that the CRT is imposing more onerous regulations and taxes upon them, perhaps with the aim of gentrifying the waterways for commercialised leisure uses. Moore was a victim of this himself*, and became a remarkable self-taught advocate.

I read through the judgement and concluded that Moore was doing his best with Ravenscroft's arguments but that some of his (Ravenscroft's) contentions were unconvincing to say the least. The one thing Moore can take from the case for his fellow boat owners, is that the CRT can't use the impounding of a boat to get licence fees out of the owner.