The continuing nightmare ordeal of Roger Jones and his fight to expose corruption in the judiciary

Part I: The Beginning

On that morning in 1978 he stepped into the ultimate nightmare. It was the supremist of bad dreams because however hard he tried, he could not wake up. He did not know it when he actually woke up that morning, but he suddenly, quite unexpectedly, found himself in one of those long, dark tunnels where he was not only walking in treacle, but every time he put a foot forward, he seemed to be going backwards. Dream experts call it a flap dream. The type of dream when someone or something is menacing you and you can only escape by flapping your arms. Pretty well all of us experience a variation of such a dream at one time or another.

The difference is, we do wake up.

To plod with Roger J. P. Jones in his written and verbal records of this nightmare is hard going because you want to keep pinching yourself to make sure you are actually awake yourself.

It all started, like so many miscarriages of justice, rather simply and innocently. Roger Jones is a prudent man who kept his books and his records clean. He was rarely in debt any more than any small business would expect to be. He had developed his piggery from just four sows when he was 21 to the 500 sows he had on that fateful day. In all there were 4000 animals. He had a contract with the agricultural food merchant's, Spillers. The contract stipulated that they would exclusively supply him with food and that he would supply them with all the pigs. They would then pay him what they earned for the pigs, less than what he owed for food.

It was a mutually amicable arrangement, and a very normal kind of transaction in modem day livestock farming. However, on that day, he realised that Spiller's owed him £35,000 and they were being, to say the least, a bit sluggish in paying up. In the small world of pig farming, Jones got the whisper that all was not entirely well with the Spillers finances. This was born out only days later when the food suppliers floundered, went decidedly bust, and were taken over. When, on that day when he stepped into the tunnel, he looked at his own books, and decided that, while he was paying his bills on time if Spillers went on being tardy, he might soon not be able to pay his bills when they fell due. He decided to call his solicitor, Mr. L. Chamkin and accountant to the farm on the windy morning of 30th March 1978 Everything was healthy and in hand and all he needed to do was find some protection should Spillers renege on the deal.

Suing Spillers was suggested and rejected. They reasoned it could take months or even years for the whole thing to come to court, and while it was doing so, Spillers would not pay and may even go bankrupt themselves. The three men did not know at that stage that Spillers was on the very point of going down. They finally agreed that he should apply in the local courts for a Receiving Order (RO).

The crucial fact was that at that time Spillers held all the cards. Even though they were not paying him, the contract stipulated that Jones was obliged to sell all the pigs he produced to the firm. This was definitely a touch of Catch 22.

The results of what was decided on that day began the nightmare journey through the treacle. In a mere devastating thirteen days Mr. Jones went from being a highly contented and successful pig farmer to complete ruin and it all happened so fast that it took him years to actually find out what had really taken place. Through judicial negligence, pure chicanery, and what Jones is still convinced was corruption, he suddenly found himself bankrupt -and Spillers came along and took all his pigs away.

How this was actually allowed to happen was a nightmare in itself. But the reason why he could not subsequently wake up from it was that from then on the wheels of the judicial establishment just poured more glue on his path as they studiously covered up what was clearly an injustice.

It had all seemed so clear to Jones at the time. An RO allows two basic things: That creditors at a First Meeting may find out the full situation; and that the debtor may give an explanation and that he is able to make proposals as to the debts. It specifically does not allow the Official Receiver to deal with the property of a debtor except to protect the goods. It also allows the debtor to sue for debt without giving security. As Jones knew his assets far outweighed his liabilities and his business was making good profits he was convinced everything would go smoothly. He therefor went to the local court with his solicitor and signed an application for a RO happily and in good faith.

But he was astonished when, first thing the very next day, a Friday, an assistant of the Official Receiver's (OR) office turned up with a Spillers man and a man called M.F.R. Peak. He was told the OR had authorised Spillers to take the pigs and that Peak was now in charge of the farm. Effective immediately. This immediately removed his most important assets. Jones was dumbfounded and angry, as anyone might be. He tried to show his Spillers contract. It specifically stated that the pigs could only be removed on a bankruptcy order, not an RO and that Spillers owed him a large amount of money and had not paid him as they were contracted to do. They ignored him waiving aside his protests. He demanded that the OR and Spillers boss be immediately called to his farm.

When the OR Perkins and Spillers boss Clegg arrived they called each other by their first names and obviously knew each other well. They went off to the local village pub and enjoyed a lunch together. To Jones's growing anger and frustration that afternoon it became patently obvious that the office of the OR and Spillers were in cahoots before the visit. Jones suspected that they were aquatinted because Spillers had already called in the OR's office to discuss their own financial problems. They'd probably done it over a round of golf. The OR told Jones to shut up and that he was wasting his time. The OR seized all Jones's books and papers.

Worse was to follow that day Peak got on with the job with some zeal and relish First he whistled breezily as he estimated the value of the furniture inside the house, seriously upsetting Mrs. Jones. Then he summarily sacked the staff. Whatever redress Roger Jones may have had, by then his business had been effectively destroyed. Spillers removed all of the pigs on April 3rd. the Monday after a horrific week end for Jones and his family. On April 4th Mr. Jones wrote personally to all his own creditors, imploring them to attend his statuary first creditors meeting so that he could tell them of the activities of Spillers and the OR. Effectively the sows were on hire purchase from Spillers to the tune of £17,500. But they were worth at least £100,000, to say nothing of Jones's other pigs, his farm and his business.

At his statuary private examination on April 5th Jones was treated almost as a schoolboy. The OR demanding that he sign a statement that he would not sue Spillers, saying he had been officially "bankrupted" and that a OR could make any financial demands on the Jones business that he liked. He told the farmer that he couldn't sue Spillers anyway without his permission, which would never be forthcoming. The private examination should have included Jones signing his statement of affairs. The figures the OR had prepared, made no sense to Jones.

Against the letter of the law, Mr. Jones refused to sign his private examination notes. Peak came to his farm and demanded that Jones sign his trading figures, sale of Jones pigs to Spillers, again Jones refused. However he got Peak to sign a note that he had made the demand at the request of the OR. and that Jones had said such a request was illogical as the OR had told him he must not interfere with Peak as Special Manager running of the business. Jones later discovered that 732 of the pigs that Spillers removed were never accounted for.

How was it allowed to happen?

Unfortunately, on the very day after the RO was signed, Jones's solicitor had gone on holiday and the farmer was unable to take proper advice. He still fully believed he had only signed an RO and that all these people were acting illegally.

As his solicitor L Chamkin would be away for two weeks, Jones tried another firm of solicitors and explained what had happened, only to be told that they had no expertise in bankruptcy nor did they know of a firm that did. Jones visited the library at Oxford and it was very clear to him from what he read that petitioning for a RO should not have had the results he had experienced.

It was a complete mystery to him and there was no one to fight his corner. When he tried to get his court papers from the court to find out exactly why an RO had put him into such immediate bankruptcy, they refused to let him see them. This was illegal. The law specifically allows him to see all his Court records at any time. Only years later, when he found a way while the court clerk was out, did he discover that someone had illegally added to his petition for a RO after he had signed it. The ultimately fatal words were, "and that I be adjudged bankrupt." This time he was not dreaming, but just to make sure he rushed home to find his own copy of the RO application. His own solicitor had handed it to him at the time of the signing. The crucial words were not there.

Absolute proof, you might agree, that the words had been added by someone who had access to the court files, after Jones himself had left the court. Almost certainly a court official. Jones also discovered that the adjudication (Bankruptcy Order) had not been signed, Indeed he discovered that there had not even been a hearing for a RO never mind for a Bankruptcy order which meant that not even the RO existed in law -let alone a bankruptcy order. The adjudication had to be signed before it was published in the official London Gazette. So, despite the fact that Spillers had been allowed to pinch his pigs, he was never actually bankrupt in the first place.

The First Creditor's Meeting itself. on April 11th, was a complete sham. A judicial farce. Far from being able to assure his creditors that everything was in hand, he was actually barred from the meeting itself. Under the 1914 Bankruptcy Act it actually requires a debtor to attend to "submit to such examination and give such information as the meeting may require." Despite this clear directive, he was placed in a separate room and held there until the meeting was over. He protested vehemently but was still disallowed entry. This instruction from the OR was clearly illegal. The OR at that meeting was obliged by law to produce Jones's statement of affairs. He was unable to do so because Jones had refused to sign the OR made up figures. Jones was denied the chance to explain that he was sure the OR's actions were illegal.

This was only 13 days after Jones had signed the doctored document, but during that time Spillers had already announced. It had lost £28 m, closed 23 factories and fired 8000 of their employees. It was eventually taken over by a firm called Dalgety's. The Official Receiver's office had clearly seen this coming. Recovering such a large amount put poor Mr. Jones at the bottom of the pile and, quite clearly as you sift through the thousands of pages now on record, the OR knew that the contract stipulated clearly that Spillers "owned" many of Mr Jones's pigs. Catch 22 had clearly come into force. Simply, despite the fact that Spillers owed Jones £36,000, they also owed hundreds of times that elsewhere, the pigs were a reclaimable asset.

The nitty-gritty of the matter dates back to the afternoon of March 30 1978 and exactly who had added the fateful rider. Quite clearly, if it was not there when Mr. Jones signed it (and he is not the kind of person who does not read the small print), then only a court official could have possibly done it. Unless of course, it was added subsequently by the OR. Since that date there has been a most heavy smell of collusion.

You might think that this was enough of a nightmare. But it was only the very first step in the tunnel. Lots more was to follow and in his Oxfordshire village of Deddington, near Banbury, Oxon., to this very day, Roger Jones is still plodding through the treacle. Not only has he failed to get retribution for twenty years of knowing that he had been victim of a clearly illegal action in the jurisdiction of an English courtroom, but the system has stubbornly refused to even acknowledge it. In doing so it has consistently gone on flagrantly getting deeper into its own mire. The list of legal irregularities - right up to the office of the Lord Chancellor - is almost beyond belief. And it has all caused untold grief to the entire Jones family.

First of all, Jones questioned the behaviour of his original solicitor who had clearly shown negligence if petitioning for a Receiving Order, could in any legal way, have the effect that Jones had experienced. The lawyer, L. Chamkin refused to acknowledge he had been lax in any way. on his original advice; Jones is convinced the nightmare may never have begun if the OR had acted in a proper manner and within the law. Even though, as it soon became obvious, the demise of Spillers spelt storm clouds on the horizons.

At least, Roger Jones may have kept his pigs - and consequently stayed in business.

The fact is that a Receiver's Order is quite clearly not a Bankruptcy Order. It may be a stopgap measure which eventually leads to bankruptcy, but that is another matter. By adding six crucial words to an already signed document changed it from a request for a RO into one for a RO and a Bankruptcy Order, this is the very crux of this blatant miscarriage.

Those fatal fraudulent six words were to create twenty years of abject misery as Roger Jones tried to first find out what had really happened, and then get retribution. It cost him his house and business, his happiness and contentment, and after several heart attacks, very nearly his life.

Part II: The Cover Up

If a professional plumber is employed and paid to fit a water system into your house and it is later found that, because of negligence, everything is leaking everywhere, then the law presumes you will be entitled to redress. So, surely, it would be the same with other trades, including that of soliciting. Indeed, even more so, because a plumber cannot be "struck off", yet there is a self-regulatory body for solicitors called the Law Society (LS) - to which Roger Jones eventually resorted. He was sorely disappointed.

Roger Jones is not the kind of person to just let matters ride, and in those early stages he still firmly but innocently believed that the British law, must in the end be on his side.

Jones changed solicitors. On Chamkin's return from holiday Jones visited him and told of the incredible events. The happenings were to Chamkin as with Jones, quite beyond any rationale. Chamkins said he would, and did in fact obtained a Legal Aid Certificate to allow a solicitor to investigate the matter and to get counsel's opinion as to the behaviour of both Spillers and the Official Receiver. He lent Jones a scooter and copies of both Halsbury's Statutes and Laws of England. Jones obtained a pass which gave him access to the Bodlean Library at Oxford where he spent long hours pouring over tomes in the legal section. Jones sent flurries of letters to everyone he could think of.

As Jones after a period of homelessness had moved to the other end of Oxfordshire, he then with his Legal Aid Certificate implored a new solicitor John Spratt, the senior litigation partner in the firm of Shoosmith and Harrison. Spratt at first exuded a full confidence that he, Spratt was the very man to deal with Jones's case. Unfortunately it quickly became evident that Mr. Spratt had nothing on him but a few more buckets of treacle.

Despite Spratt's bragging assurances he merely sat on everything for months on end, giving written guarantees that everything was "in hand". He wrote to Jones saying that it had accrued to him that he had few documents relating to the bankruptcy itself. Jones replied that he hardly had been given any (the reason later became obvious). However he knew from Jones copy of his petition to the Court that Jones had only requested a RO which could not legally have had the effect it did. Court clerks and local solicitors are invariably in cahoots, both professionally and socially. Why did Spratt not immediately investigate this core issue. He had Jones's Legal Aid Certificate specifically obtained to investigate this very matter. Was there a clear and blatant fraud in order to seize Jones' valuable pigs?

He admitted that he knew virtually nothing of the bankruptcy laws. It took six months for Spratt to get the original papers and account books that the OR had seized in the first place. He then sat on them. Spratt failed to take counsel's advice and get an accountants report from an accountant counsel suggested. He gave the wrong brief to counsel, without consulting Jones and then Jones found out Spratt was actually trying to have Jones' legal aid stopped. Spratt had made his killing and wanted to wash his hands of the affair. He knew full well that he was simply out of his depth.

Despite the fact that he had done virtually nothing but hinder proceedings, Jones learnt that Spratt had already put in a bill to the LS for £4,469. The LS was getting edgy about the spiralling costs. Eventually, they pulled the plug on it, and Jones was back to square one. He justly felt he had a carte blanch case of negligence and contrivance behind the stopping of his Legal Aid.

Jones complained vigorously through the LS complaints procedures and about having his Legal Aid stopped and the utter negligence of Spratt. The Law Society wrote to him in defence of their own non action in this matter:

"Further, it is the opinion of the society that, as a matter of law the society's handling of Legal Aid applications or of complaints against solicitors does not give rise to a duty of care to the applicant for Legal Aid or the complainant"

The Law Society simply refused to grant a Legal Aid Certificate. He could not sue his solicitor unless he paid for it himself because the solicitor's own governing body decided the allocation of such certificates, and they had refused him. Treacle, treacle, everywhere.

But Roger Jones resolutely plodded on. He wrote to his then MP Douglas Hurd. He wanted to get the Department of Trade, who are responsible for the Insolvency Service to make an investigation into the fraud itself. The letter to Hurd, passed onto Jones stated, "the department cannot intervene."

While he was still dealing with Spratt, the trauma had nearly got the better of him when he only just survived a serious heart attack. He has had series heart problems since, culminating recently in quadruple heart by-pass surgery.

Jones looked forward to the day when he would be free of the bankruptcy order, so he could really go to town on fighting his case. As he had abided by all the rules and kept his house very much in order he was fully confident that he would be released within the statutory fifth year. In anticipation of this and that at last he could being an action without the OR Trustees permission he filed an affidavit at the Oxford Court outlining his case in full. It was a damning indictment. So damning, in fact, that the OR's office got rather panicky and to Jones' ultimate chagrin, they asked for and received an extension of six months to his bankruptcy taking it a few days over the six years statute barred time for bringing a case for damages.

When it did come to court, Jones was a litigant in person. The lawyers for Trustee Peak and OR managed to steamroller the proceedings with legal jargon and gobbledegook. The main gist of Jones's argument - that he should never have been made bankrupt in the first place were simply waved away on a sea of legal rhetoric.

Daunted but not beaten, Jones went for an appeal and appeared before the High Court in mid- January 1984. The judges "noted" his complaints but agreed: "Just how the added words came to be inserted is a matter that cannot very well be resolved today upon the information that is now before us."

This was, to say the very least, a rather odd judgement. The court was aware that Jones had his own copy of a document which did not have the crucial words on them, and another (the so-called 'official' version) which did. Even if they could not ascertain for sure just who had added the words, at least they could have acknowledged that they had been added, thereby proving that Jones had been falsely bankrupted. It seems almost inconceivable that they should simply pooh-pooh the whole thing out of court. But that is what happened. Another "stop, new paragraph..."

Still Jones plodded on. Nearly ten years after the fateful day, he decided to go above the Law Society and the DTI by appealing direct to the Lord Chancellor who then was The Rt. Hon. Lord Mackay of Clashfern. Such a relatively 'paltry' claim, however, would never have reached his Lordship direct, but would have been dealt with in his name by those ever-reliable "Yes, Ministers," the Civil Servants.

First of all, why could Jones not get legal aid to make a complaint against a solicitor?

The Lord Chancellor is not responsible for the professional conduct of solicitors since they are members of an independent, self-governing profession.

But yet, again, Jones had done his homework and uncovered the judgement of a previous Lord Chancellor, Lord Halden, in Nocton-v- Lord Ashburton (1914). The precedent stated:

"The solicitor contracts with his clients to be skilful and careful. For failure to perform his obligation he may be liable at law in contract or even in tort, for negligence in breach of a duty imposed on him."

So, quite wrongly in Jones's opinion, based on the precedence, yet another department had shirked its responsibilities. All solicitors are servants of the judiciary, court officers. How could the highest judiciary in the land avoid responsibility for their actions?

By now, of course, Jones had become a bloody nuisance and a veritable thorn in the side of everyone from the Clerk to the Court in Oxford to the Lord Chancellor's department. The system throws up a Jones from time to time and word soon gets around. Just occasionally, very occasionally, the system realises that it would be better to acquiesce, just to get the litigant off their backs. But they stood firm against Roger Jones. Was this because if they acquiesced this time they would open a very smelly can of worms?

Was Roger Jones such a paranoiac nutter that he had sat in the bath one day and dreamt it all up? That very unlikely scenario is really the only alternative to an on-going cover up.

By now Jones was sitting on a whole string of injustices. The initial fraud, the solicitors' negligence; misleading statements by the DTI and now the Lord Chancellor - and I don't think most sane and reasonable people would blame him for thinking that a carefully contrived cover up was now in operation. As the hanky panky went on, then the more the judiciary had to lose in allowing themselves to be exposed.

Jones was a little more than puzzled by the bland statement by The Department of Trade that "the department cannot intervene" regarding the behaviour of the Trustee and OR because he had read Halsbury's Laws of England and para 221 of the section on Bankruptcy clearly stated:

"The Department of Trade and Industry is vested with the statutory powers and duties relating to the supervision of the administration of bankrupts' estates. The Department certifies the appointments of trustees in bankruptcy other than the official receiver, has the power to remove them and to grant them their release, supervises, and enforces, the performance by official receivers and trustees of their duties in administering bankrupts' estates and in investigating the conduct of bankrupts" (para 484) "The Official Receivers form part of the insolvency services administered by the department."

If, like Jones, you need to have an incident concerning an Official Receiver investigated, then who else can you go to than the DTI? Indeed the law states that the DTI has a statutory duty to carry out such an investigation. There is no other explanation than that the DTI had clearly lied to Douglas Hurd. The words "The department cannot intervene," is simply but blatantly not true. Hurd wrote to say there was nothing more he could do. It was another civil servant's full stop.

Roger Jones's own explanation, or interpretation, of this denial is quite simply that if the full glare of publicity was put on his case -a case of interfering with court documents - it would be a monumental embarrassment to the department. On top of this, if it were found to be true, compensation to Jones would be necessarily vast. Who knows how many more cases this precedent would create? They could all come pouring out of the woodwork. It was far easier, as it often is, for a civil servant to simply say, "we cannot intervene." Whether they can, which they certainly could, can be glossed over with these bland words. It creates a full stop in all proceedings. Certainly, Douglas Hurd and other MP's Jones approached, were not willing to take it any further, even when Jones pointed Halsbury's definition out to them.

In the pig farmer's continuing saga, however, a full stop only indicates the end of a paragraph. There were still many more pages to write before the final words "The End". But Roger Jones was by now very much on his own. Denied legal aid to fight his case and any further investigation by the DTI, he still plodded on.

Remember the simplicity of all this in real terms. There are two pieces of paper both signed which say different things. Is it beyond the entire judiciary - up to the Lord Chancellor - to decide that something is manifestly out of order?

To us at Miscarriages in Justice it is obvious that many Litigants In Person, become their own worst enemies. They get on the treadmill and they can't get off. It goes round and round and the harder you plod, the sooner you come round to the step you started on. Jones's case is painfully familiar. But if a clear injustice has been committed against you and everyone seemingly works to thwart you, even breaking the law to do so, whatever else can you possibly do?

As Roger Jones states in one of his many written entreaties: "The matter had clearly over the years of evasion and deceit become an impossible situation (for them) to defend".

The savage irony of all this is that Jones had originally gone to the court for protection which a proper Receiving Order would have given him. Instead, it had plunged him into nearly a quarter of a century of mental agony and chaos and then proceeded merely to protect itself. At his Oxfordshire home, Roger Jones has come to another full stop. But it is only the end of a paragraph.

Biographical Note:

His farming career began when, as a teenager, he was one of the last of the old-time apprentices where he lived in and the farmer got paid for having him. A year at Agricultural College followed and then six months on a farm in Canada. Aged 21 a "kind old Major" offered him 60 acres at £60 an acre with a 100% mortgage for 15 years. He raised a bank loan and moved into a caravan on the land. While so ensconced he married and his wife helped him with the pigs before and after going to work in Oxford.

During the next 17 years he built up the business from four to 500 sows and erected a bungalow. At the time of the catastrophe he was producing 10,000 porkers a year with an estimated value of between £400-500,000. He became a respected member of the NFU and his wife bore two children. The "unbelievable" happened in his 38th year. After that, he found himself back in a caravan in a friend's garden. With children then aged eight and ten they were put into accommodation for the homeless and then a council house where the family still live.

Further information can be obtained from:
Roger Jones (Tel: 01869 338845)
12 Windmill Street
Deddington
Banbury
Oxon OX15 OQW
United Kingdom