Neelu’s latest trials and travails

It’s been some time since we heard from our old friend Neelu Berry, but we recently noted with interest that she played a walk-on/walk-off role in a drama centred on her good friend Lee Cant.

This post from Nearly Legal blogger Giles Peaker is a must-read—it’s like Old Home Week for those who followed last summer’s witless intimidation trial. In Cant v London Borough of Hackney, we find not only Neelu, but Edward William Ellis, the disqualified lawyer, who was apparently still under a General Civil Restraint Order at the time of this hearing (January 2017).

As Giles Peaker says,

It is rare, if we are entirely honest, for a First Tier Tribunal decision on service charges to be exciting. It is even rarer for there to be mystery and police raids, and “Immunity from Treason” notices, and debts of “Trillions of pounds”, and something called an ‘equity lawyer’. Yet here they all are, and more, in what on the face of it was a dispute over annual service charges of about £1200. …

At what turned out to be the first part of the hearing, the start was delayed “to give Mr Cant the chance to at least read the (Hackney’s) skeleton argument, which he had been offered when he arrived but refused to take”. Mr Cant then denied having received the bundle that Hackney had sent, suggesting it went to a neighbour’s address and he hadn’t had time to pick it up.

This problem with the bundles resulted in a further adjournment whilst the matter was investigated at which point Miss Berry intervened and we adjourned to give time for her to be removed from the Tribunal room. (This is the first and last mention of Miss Berry, but she appears to have left her mark.)

Unfortunately for Mr Cant, in the meantime, the courier company confirmed the bundle had been delivered to his address and he had signed for it.

 

The above was Neelu’s one and only contribution to the general merriment, but it does conjure a not unamusing image.

That was then, this is now

More recently, though, it seems Neelu has been up to her old tricks: failing to pay for things, and then getting most exercised and levying trillion pound liens for dishonour and treason when the going gets rough. Yesterday morning we noted that she’d had some unexpected visitors:

Interesting that the bailiffs would somehow be accompanied by both police and an ambulance, but that’s how things go in LouLotusLand: it’s really not a party until the emergency services have been called out.

We’re reminded of the debacle two years ago this September, in which the towing company arrived to confiscate her son’s car (once again for unpaid tickets which Neelu refused to acknowledge). It’s hard to forget the sight of Neelu, ensconced in the driver’s seat, being slowly hoisted by the tow truck, while she attempted to place everlasting trillion-pound liens on the gentlemen who’d come to seize the car. They seemed singularly unimpressed, and finally Neelu capitulated, paying the fine under protest.

This time, she attempted to bargain with the towing company, offering them £5 per month which she claimed is “all she can afford”, but they were having none of it, and drove off, leaving the car duly clamped in her drive.

We do wonder why Neelu is still living in the same house, as we understand that it was repossessed by the bank for non-payment of mortgage a few months back. We were expecting a full-on Tom Crawford seige, replete with Freeman on the Land woo and protesters on the roof, but nothing ever came of it, which makes us wonder whether Neelu and the bank reached some sort of accommodation. We do hope that’s the case, as trillion-pound liens can take aeons to pay off.