My bad ... I had completely overlooked May 19, which was yet another monthly interestversary for Lloydminster's Patrick "Mega Ultra Nexus Dragon" Ross in terms of it being exactly 21 months since a Saskatchewan judge told him how much he owed me and cranking up the annual interest rate on that amount from 2% to 5%:
And, sure, I've managed to claw back a few thousand dollars from Patrick over the years, but it doesn't come close to the additional interest he now owes me. But all that aside, there is a more interesting development.
Via an anonymous tipster, I was told that boy lawyer Patrick Ross is now threatening to sue even more people than he's threatening to sue now. I didn't get any further details but, if this is true and you are one of the people in Patrick's gravy-slathered sights, I'm going to help you out and explain how you can protect yourself. All of what follows is based on a publicly-available transcript involving Patrick Ross and Peter Skinner from back in August of 2022, and I will reproduce the salient bits verbatim so you know I am not misrepresenting anything.
The backstory to this is that Patrick -- for whatever reason -- decided to sue Peter Skinner some time back, and filed a Statement of Claim with the then Court of Queen's Bench in Alberta. Peter responded with a Statement of Defence that included (among other things) the observation that, as an undischarged bankrupt, Patrick has no legal standing to initiate any legal actions without the permission of his trustee. It is with that understanding that I reproduce this exchange between the judge and Patrick, where the judge brings up Patrick's status as an undischarged bankrupt and how it typically relates to a legal action:
(Side note: There is an obvious transcription error in the above in that line 25 should clearly read, "Okay. So then you had to get permission from your trustee ...". I think that's fairly obvious as the text in the transcript makes no sense otherwise. In any event, onward.)
Note first that the judge is making a trivial observation; that under normal circumstances, an undischarged bankrupt has no standing to file a legal action, and should get the permission of his or her trustee. This is in no way controversial; it's the way things normally work. However, note well how Patrick tries very hard to mislead the court.
First, Patrick (correctly) admits that he is an undischarged bankrupt; however, it's what Patrick leaves out that is so crucial. Based on the exchange above, the judge could be forgiven for assuming that Patrick's is a typical bankruptcy, with a conditional discharge order and a monthly payment that Patrick is making and so on; that is, a bankruptcy that is proceeding smoothly towards an inevitable discharge.
Nowhere in the above does Patrick volunteer that he is years behind on his obligatory reporting to the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, and years behind on his payments, and that I have successfully filed to have him removed from the protection of bankruptcy and currently have a collections order against him in the province of Saskatchewan. No, all Patrick discloses is that he is "as yet undischarged," clearly trying to give the impression that there's nothing out of the ordinary here. But it gets so much worse.
When, on line 25, the judge (quite appropriately) asks Patrick whether he ran all this by his trustee, this might have been a good time for Patrick to disclose that he does not have a trustee. In fact, Patrick's trustee discharged himself in February of 2014 due to Patrick's contemptuous non-compliance with his obligations under the bankruptcy regime, and right then would have been perhaps a good time for Patrick to admit that. Instead, and stunningly, Patrick replies simply, "No, I didn't ...", then desperately tries to change the subject.
I'm fairly sure that the judge would have been gobsmacked to learn that, rather than this being a typical bankruptcy, Patrick has been without a trustee for almost a decade but, as you can read for yourself, Patrick volunteers none of that and soldiers on. I won't say that this is an outright lie, but I submit that it's more than fair to suggest that Patrick deliberately misled the Court in that exchange. But, once again, it gets worse in this exchange on the very next page as the judge, still unaware of the situation, continues to assume that Patrick has a trustee:
Yet again, that would have been a good time for Patrick to perhaps 'fess up to his lack of a trustee (and a number of other things), and yet again, Patrick continues to mislead the court. So what is the point of all this?
The point is, if Patrick is actually trying to sue others for whatever reason, and you're one of his intended targets, you need to be aware of all of the above and you need to bring all of it to the attention of the Court and not let Patrick so obviously mislead by omission. Now, Patrick is convinced that he found legal precedent that allows him to sue others with or without a trustee. Well, maybe he did, and maybe he didn't, but given his current situation, if he wants to make that argument to a judge, that judge really needs to know all of this, and if Patrick is currently vowing to slap you with some sort of legal action, well, drop me a note and I will make sure you are up to date with everything you need to crush him in court.
Oh, and what I think is the most important thing here? If you examine that most recent snippet, it clearly represents a judge telling Patrick in plain and simple English how things normally work for an undischarged bankrupt, so if Patrick insists on continuing to pull shit like this, what the above shows is that Patrick was told in no uncertain terms that he should work through his trustee, and that he is refusing to follow the advice of the court. And judges, really, really, really hate people who do that.
In any event, happy interestversary! See you next month.
BONUS TRACK: Anonymous commenter asks whether Patrick really has legal precedent such that he can sue people without a trustee. Well, yes and no, so let me explain.
As you can read in that first snippet above, the judge openly concedes, "There are always bankruptcy exceptions," and he's right -- there is a small and very restricted set of circumstances under which an undischarged bankrupt can unilaterally launch a legal action independent of his trustee, but Patrick fails to appreciate why those exceptions don't even remotely apply to him.
The whole point of bankruptcy is that, once you file, you effectively hand over the management of all of your assets to your trustee, whose job it is to protect the interests of both the bankrupt and, more importantly, the creditors. More specifically, it is the responsibility of the trustee to ride herd on the bankrupt, and ensure that conditional discharge payments are made so that the creditors will receive the money owed them. And as long as the bankrupt is following the rules, and making the payments such that the creditors are being paid, then the court is sometimes willing to give the bankrupt some leeway in terms of how to choose to spend their remaining money. And now you see Patrick's problem.
Patrick wants to argue that he is entitled to that leeway, despite the fact that he is years behind on his obligations and payments, to the point where I have had to start collection proceedings against him. Put more simply, given how much Patrick owes me right now, along with his contemptuous mockery of his own bankruptcy, there is zero chance that a judge would look at this case and approve of any of Patrick's frivolous legal harassment.
Quite simply, all of Patrick's alleged precedents assume an undischarged bankrupt in good standing, who is fulfilling his responsibilities as a bankrupt and can therefore be given a little latitude to spend his money as he wishes. That this doesn't describe Patrick is something I should not have to explain, but if Patrick wants to try this crap with anyone, as I said, drop me a note and I will make sure you have everything you need to annihilate that little shit in court, and get costs.
I trust I've clarified the situation.
