Inside The Injunction: Stopping Bulk Pseudo‑Legal Mail To A BC Court Registry

A small BC registry faced an outsized problem: one litigant’s avalanche of quasi‑legal letters and “certificates” that looked official enough to demand hours or days of staff time to sort, scan, and check. We trace how the Attorney General sought an injunction and how the court landed on a careful middle ground—no more bulk mail, but full access for legitimate filings in person, by agent, or through Court Services Online, with authority to discard items that don’t meet the Rules of Court. It’s a practical fix aimed at protecting open courts from being gamed by invented paperwork, without closing the door on real claims.

From there, we pivot to the high‑stakes world of civil forfeiture and unexplained wealth orders in British Columbia. Unlike criminal forfeiture, these tools can target property without a conviction and sometimes on reasonable suspicion alone. We break down how the civil standard shifts burdens, why Section 8 privacy arguments matter, and what “in rem” actions mean when the state goes after assets rather than people. You’ll hear how cross‑border conduct can still count as “unlawful activity,” what judicial discretion really looks like at this threshold, and why “constitutionally permissible” isn’t the same as wise policy.

Across both stories runs a shared question: how do we keep the justice system open, efficient, and fair when it’s pulled between access and abuse, privacy and enforcement? We offer clear explanations, grounded examples, and practical context to help you form your own view on filing limits, registry triage, property rights, and the true cost of suspicion‑based powers. If this conversation helps you see the legal system with sharper edges, share it with a friend, subscribe for more thoughtful breakdowns, and leave a review to tell us where you stand.

Follow this link for a transcript of the show and links to the cases discussed.

Transcript

The Registry Drowns In Mail

Michael Mulligan 0:24

Indeed it does. And you would think he would be the poster child for the uh Canada Post, given the uh fall in letters being sent and the implications that's having. But uh indeed this actually showed up in court uh in the form of the Attorney General of British Columbia seeking an injunction an injunction to prohibit this man uh from continuing to write letters to the Smithers Supreme Court Registry. Uh and so, first of all, the registry, right? Like if you go into a courthouse, it's not only like courtrooms, but there's also the registry where things would be, you know, filed, right? Like if you're suing somebody, you go and file documents there about that or replies to things. All sorts of stuff might come into the court registry who would have the task of, you know, examining it and stamping it and filing it and, you know, all that sort of thing. Well, uh, if you wonder whether you might send too many things to the court registry, this would be a case dealing with that. This fellow started sending letters uh to the court registry along with various other things which were described as sort of quasi-legal documents, trying to like get in touch with judges or other judicial officials, and it sounds like he has some actual litigation going on, right? Some cases he's involved with. But he's been sending things, including described with various titles that he's kind of made up, self-titled documents, including things titled things such as a non-negotiable notice of acceptance. That's not a real thing, uh, a notice of dishonor, whatever that might be, a notice of repentance, uh of sins for cause, or a notice of rescission and requisition for general cause and further certificates of dishonor. Uh and so he's sending all these things, and and I should say in the this decision, uh he was described as generally polite, civil, uh in his attendances and personed, uh, you know, mailing these things coming in. He's not, you know, threatening someone, but he's sending a lot of stuff. Um and maybe uh as a result of the postage uh implications of you know twelve hundred some odd letters, and I must say that was in less than a year.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Wow.

Michael Mulligan 2:32

That was between uh 2003 and 2024, and it carried on. He he adopted a practice of sending uh bulk delivery, so I guess like bundling up a bunch of these things and certificates and letters and and various things, and then sending them in in in bulk. Um and the the judge on the application gave an example of one of these uh things, a a notice of repentance of sins for cause, where the person, for example, started by in this kind of quasi-legal form he'd made up, he described himself as a sentient moral being, having examined the path his feet were on, and having concluded that he's dishonored many, including various Supreme Court judges and so on, names were enacted for this decision, and so he was filing this uh notice of repentance for his sins. But it became so much uh that the the the court registry, I mean they the staff there, right, they would have a uh an obligation to, when things come in, you know, file them away uh correctly, right? And for example, the registry evidence was that particular registry might receive on average five pieces of mail per day. Interestingly, five things by fax, so somebody's still got a fax machine they're working on,

Pseudo‑Legal Documents Explained

Michael Mulligan 3:45

and thirty emails. But with this guy sending hundreds and hundreds of things in bulk delivery, the staff at the court registry was spending between two hours and three days reviewing, scanning, filing, and otherwise trying to deal with all of these things the guy kept sending in, because you never know when the you know notice of repentance for sins for cause might also include a reply to a statement of claim or something. Right?

Adam Stirling 4:11

Yeah, you have to check it all.

Michael Mulligan 4:12

Yeah, you gotta check it all. You're the court registry. So they're doing that, taking days and days of work going through all these things, and and some of the things apparently caused, even though he's described as generally polite and civil, some of the things like, you know, notices of sins and so on, cause is it referen it was referencing various people who, you know, like worked there and sheriffs and uh judges and judicial officials. Some of the things like the you know uh communication about somebody being uh you know, a notice of sin or talking about them repenting and various things, I guess caused some mild worry uh among some of the staff there, uh, in addition to just the vast resources being consumed in dealing with this guy's pseudo-legal stuff that he was dropping off there. And so the judge first of all had to figure out like, okay, what what authority is there to do anything about this, right? The man's not threatening, he's not assaulting anyone, he's just sending a bunch of stuff. And so the uh judge looked at some authority, there's some acts. There's a thing called the Supreme Court Act, which, for example, says that the Attorney General D.C. has an obligation to uh deal with operations and maintenance of court facilities, registries and administrative services. There's the Attorney General's Act, which speaks about things like the Attorney General's general obligation to superintend matters connected to the administration of justice. You know, that's uh that's a uh something. Uh and then sort of uh some inherent jurisdiction for the attorney general to try to do things uh alleviate public nuisances and so on. And ultimately the judge on this application concluded that they did have authority to restrict this and decided to do so. But of course, there's a concern about restricting somebody's ability to go to court after all the guys involved in some actual litigation, right? And so you can't just say you can't file anything. That's not on. And so the middle ground the judge found on this was to restrict how the person can communicate, including not allowing him to mail things. I'm not sure that's going to solve it, but he can't mail things, that's the order. Uh and the he's re he's maintained uh various ways in which he can file correspondence. So the uh correspondence can be filed at the registry. It can't be uh it can be filed at the registry not by mail any longer, including by bulk mail, bad news for Canada Post. Uh, but he can submit documents for filing either in person through a thing called court services online, like a way you can file documents, you know, electronically given that it's 2026, or through an agent filing things. But the judge has tried to admonish saying you can only submit documents if they are in accordance with the rules of court or a specific direction of the court and has given authority to disregard and discard correspondence received by the registry. That's not that. But it it does leave me wondering, are they not still gonna have to go through all this stuff? You know, even if he's not bailing it. Somebody's gonna does this thing comply with a rule of court, right? I don't know. If somebody sent you 200 letters, you're probably still

Impact On Staff And Safety

Michael Mulligan 7:20

gonna have to start opening them and scanning them and looking at them and consulting the rules of court. So, anyways, it's uh bad news for Canada Post, be less postage there, and and maybe this will provide some relief to the uh poor staff at the registry there. Uh, but in any case, that's what's going on, and the answer is you can send just too many letters to the court registry. You might find yourself on the end of an injunction. That's latest over the Smithers Court Registry.

Adam Stirling 7:45

I was just gonna say if he breaks the rules, is there a punishment or can he be held in contempt? Like is this a stepping stone to stanction or does it stay?

Michael Mulligan 7:54

Could be. I mean, this is a court order, so it'd be like any injunction. That's what this is, right? It'd be like just like an injunction saying stop blocking the logging road. Yeah. Right. If he was to do otherwise, like he was to mail something in rather than in person submitting his document, I mean, you would wind up with all kinds of arguments potentially about things like, you know, is this in accordance with the rules of court? You could readily imagine how, you know, there's no reference, of course, in the rules of court to a notice of rescission and uh a notice of repentance of sins. That's not on. But, you know, what what what if it turns into, well, they're now just all attached as an affidavit or to some piece of legisl you know, litigation or something. So uh, you know, if he persists and he's prepared to show up in person, polite as he is, uh, it still seems to me somebody there is gonna have to go through all this stuff. So maybe it's another example of just sure how much we all depend on in life on reasonableness, uh, and it's pretty hard to sort of put down in words what exactly I want to let you do here, right? Yeah, you can engage in litigation, yeah, you might have things you want to file, but please don't start making up notices of dishonor. That's just not a real thing. It does have, I must say, there is this unfortunate thing about these people that call themselves like free men on the land, yeah, who will like do things like refuse to get driver's licenses and you know, just insist they can kind of walk the earth like Cain and you know, you'll occasionally see these people sort of showing up, you know, in court. You you I'll sit there and say, Oh my goodness, uh, thank God I'm not a uh you know provincial court judge having to deal with this person who shows up and you know insists that they're a sentient being and not a real person and they don't have a name or something. But um, anyways, there is a theme of that. I don't know how that quite spreads, but there there is this kind of thread um in, at least in British Columbia, people that come up with these kind of pseudo-legal things that cause other problems in the justice and legal system. Some of them seem to be obsessed with things like notarizing documents. And so there's this whole thread of people that are like make up various just completely fictitious things and then try to get appointments with things like notaries public and try to get them to like stamp them, uh, and then think that I guess they're whatever the thing they've dreamed up, their uh, you know, uh notice of dishonor or whatever, somehow has some official character because they managed to get some kind of official to stamp the thing. So there are all these

Can Courts Restrict Filings

Michael Mulligan 10:15

weird, you know, themes and so on going on out there, and and uh I I guess for some people it can be hard to uh distinguish uh reality from fiction, but um, anyways, this is the result. We seem to have staff at the court registry spending hours or days on end picking through bulk mailings trying to sort out the wheat for the chaff. So I guess we'll see whether this uh particular uh injunction has the uh desired uh effect uh and whether he uh just stopped making these things up.

Adam Stirling 10:44

All right, let's take our first break there. Michael Mulligan will continue with legally speaking right after this. Back on the air with Michael Mulligan from Mulligan Defense Order. Michael is an unexplained wealth order is earning $780,000 pounds. What happened?

Michael Mulligan 11:07

Well, this is a product of a piece of legislation we've got in British Columbia dealing with what's called civil forfeiture. And the background of that is this, really. We we've had for a long time in the criminal code provisions whereby if you're convicted of a crime relating to something, the like the thing that you got due to your crime can be forfeited, right? It's probably not a surprise to anyone, right? It's like if you, you know, uh got a bunch of money, you're convicted of it by selling drugs, you're convicted of the drug offense, the government can take the money you got from the drug sales. That's probably not a big surprise to anyone. But uh what's changed over the past few years in British Columbia is that we've introduced here, the government, DC's introduced here, um legislation that's called civil forfeiture legislation. It was first introduced in 2005, and then there were a bunch of amendments in 2024 replacing the original act. And the concept there is that uh even if somebody is not convicted of any criminal offense at all, or never even charged with any criminal offense, the government can try to take property um on a civil standard of probably uh if they can uh uh make out uh that the property was like the proceeds of unlawful activity or the instruments of unlawful activity, things like that. Uh and in the civil context, uh things that apply in a criminal context don't apply. Like, for example, you're not presumed to be innocent, and you don't have any right to remain silent. Um, and it's good enough to prove that probably that uh money you had there uh was some one of those kinds of things, right? And so there are some really big policy questions there about that, and it's a good reminder to everyone, and maybe people have thought about it too in the context of that uh Aboriginal title case in Richmond, right? Property or what you own is really to a large extent beyond what you're able to, you know, fend people off and push around in your shopping cart, right? It's really a matter of well, what is the government gonna let you have?

Adam Stirling 13:00

Exactly. Yeah, what will the government defend for you? Yep.

Michael Mulligan 13:03

Yeah, that's right. You mean can you stop people from taking your fill-in-the-blank if not, and the government's not willing to? It's not really yours, right? So this has an interesting background. The background is this. So the person involved in this case um was involved with some securities

The Injunction’s Middle Ground

Michael Mulligan 13:20

uh allegations in the United States about ten years ago. Um, and he was alleged to have uh been involved in a pump and dump stock scheme, which is like, you know, talking up some flimsy company and then getting the price to go up and then dumping all of the shares at the higher price. So he was alleged to have done that by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, uh, and he entered into an agreement back in 2017 to settle that investigation, whereby he didn't admit any wrongdoing, uh, but agreed to uh pay back or pay seven hundred and eighty some odd thousand dollars plus a bunch of interest to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Uh so we entered into that agreement in the United States and he paid it. So didn't agree that he did anything wrong, but agreed to pay this money. And so you think that might be it, but no, it's not, because this fellow had also sent a whole bunch of money up to a law firm in British Columbia. Now that eventually attracted the attention of the Law Society of British Columbia, who investigated the lawyer uh at the law firm, who eventually the law society found uh was engaged in uh things that could be associated with um money laundering. And the lawyer was ultimately disbarred by the law society. But the money's still there in BC, right? And this sort of account, the trust account that the law society taken over the management of. And so this fellow from the U.S. wants his money back. Um and that prompted British Columbia, the government here, uh the civil forfeiture people, which is just a part of the provincial government, to seek this thing uh which is called an unexplained wealth order, right? Um basically it's uh a thing that can be applied for under this legislation on a fairly low standard. And the the that was part of this case, uh, which was just reasonable grounds to suspect, like a suspicion, uh, that the money might be somehow like uh you know something you got from some illegal activity. No proof of it, not even reasonable grounds to believe you've done something, certainly not a criminal standard, just sort of a suspicion. Um and the legislation now uh allows for them to apply for you to basically explain yourself if they're suspicious in this way. And so basically what it means is that if the government's suspicious uh of money that you've got, right, how could you possibly have any money in this uh you know economy? Whatever, right? Yeah. Explain yourself. Where did you get it? You know, how how how did you how did you save up that money? Did you inherit it from who? Let's see it, right? Yeah, yeah. And so the fellow was opposing that, uh, and it was uh a constitutional argument saying that this really amounts to a breach of his right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, right? Everyone's heard of that concept. Um and he was arguing that, hey, you know, I've people shouldn't have to be um required to sort of account for themselves, right? Particularly in a circumstance where you haven't been convicted of anything. It's just a suspicion. Um, and sort of arguing that, look, uh you could have a uh reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to somebody's financial affairs, right? I suspect most listeners would not want to have to go and explain themselves about where did you get that money in your bank account? Uh, who do you inherit that from? How much were you making? What's going on over there, right? I think it sort of makes some inherent sense, right? Many people want to be private about their financial affairs. But in in British Columbia, if there is now a uh uh suspicion uh that that money might be, for example, the product of quote, unlawful activity, you may have to explain yourself. Now, that's another interesting thing here, because that definition of well, what is unlawful activity? Yeah, and it extends even beyond what might be unlawful in British Columbia, right? The unlawful activity, because there's no allegation this man didn't commit any crime in British Columbia, right? Some guy from the US who sent some money to a law firm up here, saying that it was to like settle a claim or pay fees or do something, right? Uh and it can be unlawful activity, even if it occurred somewhere else. First of all, if it is an offense under the act of that jurisdiction, which you might, if you think about that for a minute, cause you

The Freemen On The Land Thread

Michael Mulligan 17:30

some worries because, you know, do you really want somebody who maybe committed the offense of failing to wear their burqa or something, right? But it also has to be the same activity would have been an offense in British Columbia if it had occurred in British Columbia. So that would at least eliminate the worry that you might be committing some offense of moral turpitude in some, you know, country that has uh values that are very different from Canada. But it could be some activity somewhere else, and that's kind of what's alleged here. Uh and so the judge found that uh yes, there can be a Section 8 Charter analysis that can apply even in the context of civil things, not just criminal, where that most often comes up, uh, but found ultimately that uh this legislation was constitutionally valid, that it uh did have a sort of a balance, uh balancing of interests in it, it was sufficient to uh survive that uh charter challenge. There is uh some residual there is some judicial discretion, although I must say, in fairness, not much, uh, because once you get this sort of suspicion, right, reasonable grounds to be suspicious that the uh you know money or property or whatever it might be might be like something that was unlawful, and that's all there was here, right? We there's you know, from uh on the face of it, the argument was, well, look, they had this investigation, I didn't admit a liability, I paid the agreed upon amount, I'm done, right? Appreciate if I might be suspicious, maybe you did something else, or maybe you got some other money nobody else found out about, but just a suspicion. And so if you get to that fairly low threshold, a judge can only refuse one of these uh uh explanations to basically explain your wealth if it would be, quote, clearly not in the interests of justice, which is a pretty high bar, right? Clearly not in the interest of justice. So it's well there is some judicial oversight, that ain't much. Right? It's not some judge saying, I think this is a good idea, or I agree, or I'm finding something. And so in the civil context, uh that was upheld. One of the other interesting arguments is this, and this is also important to the decision. One of the arguments, and is it's accurate from a legal perspective, is that these sort of things, like these applications to like the government wants to take the money ultimately. They want to get the money that was in the trust account that was this guy's. Um the application is what's referred to as in RAM. It's like with respect to the money rather than the person, right? And so you could just say, Well, I'm not going to challenge it, right? I'm not going to try. to get it, let the government just take my money or take my car or take my house or or whatever, right? What's at stake is the property rather than you, right? Like you're not going to go to jail over it. You could just walk away from all of your money or walk away from your car, walk away from your house. And so that was a factor too for the judge in determining that this was uh constitutionally acceptable. And also I should say this, of course, we've talked about this before a a decision that something is constitutionally permissible is not a judicial finding that is wise, fair, or a good idea or anything else, right? It's just that yeah, that's allowed. And, you know, I I think I might have used this analogy before. It's sort of like, you know, when you determine what dose of drugs somebody should be taking, you don't figure out what's going to kill them and say, well, we've just backed it off just a tiny bit and therefore that's just the right amount. Go for it, right?

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Yeah.

Michael Mulligan 20:54

And that's

From Letters To Unexplained Wealth Orders

Michael Mulligan 20:55

all you get when there's a constitutional challenge. It's not the judge saying, yeah, this is a really fair way to do it or yeah, people should have to explain themselves. But they're just saying this is permissible. And so I just leave for everyone who's listening to all this just to think about those sort of things. Do you want to have a live in a place where uh you can have property taken away on the basis of probably? And do you want to live in a place where you if there's a government has a suspicion about what you're doing, you've got to get up and explain yourself and where'd you get that thing and how did you get it and how did you pay for it and who gave you that? But that's what we have. And you know on one level people might think well I don't like people who have all this money. It might be illegal. But on the other hand you probably don't want to be called out and have to explain all your financial affairs because a government official has gotten suspicious of you and a judge can't get to the level of clear clearly not in the interest of justice to not allow it. So that's what we have and uh the man's going to have to explain himself or he's got to walk away from his money. So that's the latest from the BC Supreme Court on unexplained wealth order in British Columbia.

Adam Stirling 21:57

All right legally speaking during the second half of our second hour every Thursday Michael thank you so much. Pleasure as always. Thanks so much. Always great to be here. All right quick break news next