We object: Courts slap curbs on ‘vexatious’ and defiant litigant
Sponsorship of wife at heart of lengthy claims
Zoltan Andrew Simon has been expressing his outrage and frustration in court ever since he sponsored a wife to immigrate to Canada and was driven to bankruptcy because of it.
His target has not been his runaway bride, but, rather, the government for wanting him to pay for her social assistance, as he had promised to do when he brought her to Canada, and then denying him the opportunity to try again with a different woman.
Since 2007, Simon’s copious claims, appeals and motions have wended their way through the Immigration and Refugee Board, the IRB’s Appeal Division, the Provincial Court of British Columbia, the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the Court of Appeal of British Columbia, the Federal Court of Canada, the Federal Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada.
Simon’s court filings are often lengthy, repetitive and sometimes accompanied by complex diagrams depicting how he sees his various allegations interconnecting.
They have been met by judicial decisions saying his arguments are “unknown in law,” his allegations are “without foundation in fact,” his constitutional challenges are “irrelevant and unmeritorious” and his claims “unintelligible.”
Defeats lead to additional accusations, providing more officials to sue with rapid-fire appeals, making his caseload spread like tentacles. One judge who denied his claim was attacked in an appeal as being mentally unwell because she couldn’t see things his way.
Simon, a former B.C. resident living in Red Deer, Alta., has now been placed on a legal leash.
The Federal Court of Canada joined every level of court in British Columbia in declaring him a “vexatious litigant” and banning him from filing any more challenges, motions or any type of legal paperwork without first getting approval from a judge.
He has the expected response.
“I am working on my appeal,” Simon told the National Post, outlining his anticipated application to the Supreme Court.
“I have a long list of palpable and overriding errors against the three justices involved… I have too many good cards and the Crown never likes persons with strong cards and arguments.”
When it comes to the courts, he is both unrepresented and unrepentant.
Even the mounting awards of legal costs against him haven’t deterred him.
Simon’s woes started in 1999 when he married his second wife, a woman from Honduras, and sponsored her and her three children to immigrate to Canada. The couple split up soon after she arrived and she started collecting social assistance.
As a sponsor, he had agreed to be responsible for any welfare claims by her for 10 years. Some of that money was garnished through his income tax returns.
He was told he still owed $38,150, which he is not interested in repaying. He said it was the government’s fault for giving his wife the money in the first place
But things really got under his skin when, in 2006, he again married, this time to a woman from China, and sponsored her and her son to come to Canada. The Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) denied his second spousal sponsorship because he defaulted on his first.
He appealed that decision and hasn’t stopped fighting.
“I had several court cases but believed till November 2012 that everything have been caused by innocent red tape only,” Simon said.
That’s when a provincial official told him he couldn’t find any records about his debt, he said.
It fuelled a sense the government was purposely screwing with him. He claims the government wants to stop him revealing the “monster corruption” of its immigration extortion scheme.
He said he is a victim of “organized crime” that started with former prime minister Stephen Harper and continues under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
His legal claims against the government expanded beyond his sponsorship problem to include fraud, conspiracy, misrepresentation, misfeasance of public office, breach of trust, fraudulent conspiracy, false pretences and mental torture, among others.
“The day is approaching when Canada’s PM will govern by decrees,” Simon said.
“I fled from a country (Hungary) in 1975 from under a Soviet-style oppression and try to warn Canadians not to fall into a similar dictatorship situation.”
He declared bankruptcy and when he came out of protection in 2015, he again applied for his wife and stepson to come to Canada.
He was denied, with immigration officials saying his marriage wasn’t genuine, noting his wife was 13 years younger than him and they had different languages and cultures, he said.
“Of course our marriage was genuine but the ministers of Canada and B.C. are determined to keep punishing us forever,” he said.
He asked if government ministers and judges could prove their spouses didn’t marry them for their money, titles or prestige.
He plans to continue to fight, he said. But it isn’t easy. He recently filed for leave to appeal the B.C. court’s decision to ban him with the Supreme Court.
“I worked hard for two months,” he said.
“It cost me about $500 to get eight sets of my threevolume Application for Leave to Appeal printed and coil bound, then express mailed.”
He shipped it off to Ottawa in a large box with cashier’s cheques, one a $500 security deposit and the other a $75 filing fee.
The box contained more than 4,000 pages.
He is now turning his attention to building his appeal of the Federal Court decision.
It will be a tough audience reading these appeals.
In a Federal Court of Appeal decision, released this week declaring Simon a vexatious litigant, Justice David Stratas outlined the problems the court has with Simon.
“Some litigants are simply ungovernable. They ignore all the rules, do not respond constructively to the considerable attention and assistance courts give to them, flout court orders, and persist in litigation doomed to fail — sometimes resurrecting it after it is struck, and then resurrecting it again and again,” Stratas wrote. “At a certain point, enough is enough.”
Meanwhile, Simon boisterously wishes a reporter a Happy Valentine’s Day, and reiterates his fight is really about love.
“I visited my Chinese wife in 2017 for the last time but we communicate by phone,” he said.
“We are still married and I still help her financially.
“A forced separation of 12 years by Canada’s governments is not helping our — or any — marriage.”
THE CROWN NEVER LIKES PERSONS WITH STRONG CARDS.