In May of this year a forty-year-old former exemplary businesswoman and mother of three was arrested and placed in police cells for seventeen hours before appearing at Bournemouth Magistrates' Office where she pleaded guilty to criminal damage. Despite the fact that she promised she would immediately re-offend, she was given an unconditional discharge.

Before the court that day, the magistrates faced a rather extraordinary woman and a most bizarre set of circumstances. She had already been seriously weakened by a sustained hunger strike and her own refusal to continue taking medication for a thyroid deficiency and asthma.

In fact she had let everyone know rather loudly that she was either going to get justice done - or literally die in the process.

Shoppers in the busy Poole, Dorset, shopping centre had got very used to seeing this lady, Jo Hare, day after day handing out the most libellous leaflets and statements concerning a wide range of local solicitors and judges. Several of the solicitors named in these tracts had got used to having to wipe black paint from their premises after she had daubed them overnight.

What possibly could be such a truly great travesty of justice that it was worth the indignity and humiliation of this mother-of-three being manhandled into a police cell? What magnitude of miscarriage could warrant one's own death?

Was this woman obsessively insane, or was she fighting a lone war against what she could prove beyond doubt was a serious and gross breach of the law, or at least gross negligence, which had continued to be covered up?

One day, it is hoped, a jury may decide. Meanwhile Jo Hare weakens by the day as her hunger strike continues.

So, what brought about this bizarre state of affairs?

As is so often the case with the people who end up facing the ugly face of the judiciary, it all started simply enough.

In 1987 - ten long years ago - Jo's brother Thomas King sold her a lock-up fast food shop. On her part the transaction was conducted by local solicitor Ian Campbell. At first all seemed well - until at least after the purchase which had been undertaken in good faith, the local council began putting all sorts of restrictions on the premises. So did the fire department.

Then it was discovered that Campbell had not in fact done a proper search on the premises and the property, in law, simply did not exist. Her brother had not owned it to sell. Consequently, she did not own it either. But later, when Jo tried to hold Campbell responsible for this serious misconduct, he wrote saying the original conveyancing papers had, curiously, "gone missing".

The list of misdoings over the past seven years became overloaded as she stumbled around in the law trying to get some retribution. Solicitor after solicitor advised her there might well be a case, but they would not represent her unless she dropped the central charge of incompetence against Campbell.

If she had taken their advice and sworn that Campbell had indeed done a proper search, then she would have quite simply been committing perjury, which she was certainly not prepared to do.

She began to realise there was indeed a local conspiracy between local solicitors to save Campbell's bacon and, of course, in law, Jo Hare did not help her case by consistently breaking it to try desperately to publicise the scandal.

Her visit to the police cells was when she had reached the end of her tether. Her husband had successfully taken custody of her children. She had virtually gone bankrupt trying to fight her case, she was weakening physically by the day and by the time she contemplated the depressing tiles of that lonely police cell, there was nowhere else to turn.

All Jo Hare has ever asked for is a fair hearing. She fully believes that if she is properly represented, she has the overwhelming documentary proof of negligence on the part of Campbell and others.

If Campbell can prove irrefutably that he did a proper search on the premises and that there was no case of negligence to answer, then that would presumably be an end to the matter. If he is unable to do so, then all the papers in this sorry saga should be sent forthwith to the Law Society.

The trouble is, that if solicitors continue to consistently refuse to make official complaints against one of their own, then she will inevitably be denied a fair trial until she is dead.