In Aidan Llewellyn trading as the Trustee for the House of Llewellyn v State of New South Wales [2023] NSWSC 1250 Kunc J analyses Llewellyn's pseudolaw claim that birth certificates are tradeable securities.
Llewellyn among other matters claimed to be a '"bondholder" and expects full repayment of the face value of the securities".' Unsurprisingly the Court disagreed
Ms Dunlop's helpful submissions set out a number of reasons why, with great respect to the Plaintiff, the summons and the relief sought in it are completely misconceived as a matter of the laws applicable in New South Wales and, for that matter, the Commonwealth of Australia generally (Mr Llewellyn’s submissions appeared at one point to suggest a relevant distinction between state law and Commonwealth law). It is sufficient for me to deal with only two matters put by Ms Dunlop that are entirely dispositive of the Plaintiff’s claim.
The first is the Plaintiff’s proposition that either in and of itself, or by reason of the process of registration and certification or authentication, Mr Llewellyn's birth certificate is a form of security. The Court accepts the State’s submission that the birth certificate is plainly no such thing. Apart from anything else, it contains no words of charge, mortgage, guarantee or similar that one would expect to see in a document that met the orthodox legal definition of a "security". It is a birth certificate, undoubtedly an important document, but on no view is it a security creating rights as such under any law of this country.
The second fundamental difficulty with the Plaintiff’s case relied upon by the State appears from what I have set out in [16] above, which displays a basic misunderstanding of the expression "full faith and credit" where those words appear in s 118 of the Constitution (Cth) and in other legislation relied upon by the Plaintiff.
The Plaintiff, fastening upon an online definition from "Investopedia", submits that "credit" in the expression “full faith and credit” is something to do with guaranteeing or evidencing a debt. There can be no doubt that is not the meaning of "credit" in the expression "full faith and credit". "Credit" in that phrase refers to the concept of acceptance or belief in the validity of something.
The two reasons which I have identified are sufficient to demonstrate for the purposes of the State’s notice of motion that the summons discloses no reasonable cause of action and ought to be summarily dismissed accordingly. There is, in fact or law, no “Trust owned Security” about which any of the defendants can provide the information sought by the summons as explicated in the “petition”.
However, before leaving the substantive issues raised during the course of the hearing, I should also record that Mr Llewellyn "moved to strike" the State's submissions. He did so on the basis that those submissions were "non fact, hearsay, rhetoric, unwarranted, conjecture" and other epithets to like effect.
As I sought to explain to Mr Llewellyn during the course of argument, submissions are not evidence and are not required to be sworn. The State’s motion was supported by an affidavit sworn by a solicitor with the conduct of the matter. The State’s submissions are something quite different from the affidavit in support. They are exactly that – submissions – and not evidence. I therefore rejected Mr Llewellyn's application "to strike" the State’s submissions. ...
I invited Mr Llewellyn to put any submissions as to why he, being the named “petitioner, Aidan Rees Llewellyn as trustee for the House of Llewellyn”, should not be ordered to pay the State’s costs of the summons including the present motion. He responded that he should not be ordered to pay costs as he did not accept the validity of my judgment because of the various facts upon which the Plaintiff relied. He submitted those facts had not been controverted by the State and that my reasons were inadequate.
This is a case where the usual principle should apply as to costs, namely that costs follow the event. Mr Llewellyn’s submissions do not provide a proper basis to depart from that position in the exercise of the Court’s discretion. The event is the dismissal of the summons in accordance with the State’s notice of motion. The Court will order that the Plaintiff pay the State’s costs of the summons, including of the State’s notice of motion, and make directions for the resolution of the application for costs on a gross sum basis.
