Stupid or Great? Update with Cllr Steve Jones Vs Wigan Council and Donna Hall

A number of people have been ringing, emailing, texting and asking where the case is up to and if it has gone away? Simple answer no!

As with any legal case there are protocols and procedures to go through. So when, as you will know, have served legal papers against Donna Hall and Wigan Council. This was due to the fact that in the illegal by election whereby Donna Hall tried to sack a duly elected member of Wigan Council - Cllr Steve Jones after she, nor Wigan Council have said sorry to him for what they did to him. As mentioned before they have even blamed the judge for meddling and removing democracy. Shocking!

So after 9 months they have failed to apologise and/ or try to improve things. One of the conditions we said was that the Council and their staff stop harassing Cllr Steve Jones. They refused!

So Steve had no choice but to put in legal papers to go before a High Court Judge on the Queens Bench. When I say we, I mean Steve and myself as I am his McKenzie Friend - legal terminology for a friend helping with the legal case and supporting the claimant.

When legal papers go in the defendants, in this case, Donna Hall and Wigan Council, failed to respond before the deadline. So this week I went back into the High Court on Steve's behalf to ask the Judge now to give judgement against both Donna Hall and Wigan Council. We have been told this would have happened at the end of this week or beginning of next week. Can you believe that Wigan Council missed the deadline? Stupid or Great strategy? More on this in a bit. I mean they have their own legal team and dept and they miss a simple thing like a deadline.

After the deadline Wigan Council and Donna Hall got a newly appointed London Solicitor to ask for more time. Not like they have not had enough in 9 months and several letters including summons, now they want more time. The time requested is saying they need more time to see if they want to defend it. They haven't even made their minds up. Wow!

So the courts have told us what will happen is the judgement will happen and then it will go back before the judge and he will decide whether the judgement stands or if he wants to set it aside/ defer it.If the judgement stand then Wigan Council and Donna Hall will have to pay it. If the judge decides to set it aside then they will wait for their defence - if one comes in again before the deadline. Then a date will be set for the court case.

At the court case everything will come out about what they did to Steve and trust me the public doesn't know the half of it. I know on the Facebook page - Wigan Council What are you doing to our Town? people are saying the police are also corrupt and complicit in this. I am not sure if it is true that ALL GMP can called be corrupt but one thing we found out yesterday is that we can prove that there is corrupt officer(s) in GMP pulling favours for Donna Hall and Wigan Council. Once this evidence is presented - along with the vast amount of other evidences I am pretty sure the head guys at GMP will want to look further at the this. We will also looking to go for a private prosecution against Donna Hall for misuse of power in public office.  We can easily evidence this now with all this evidence.

But more on the title now Stupid or Great Strategy because as Steve said if Wigan Council and Donna Hall missed the deadline on purpose and the judge decides that he will not set aside the judgement and it stands guess what happens ALL this evidence will not come out in the court case and they can blame an admin failure etc. If that was their idea then it could be a good strategy from them to try and keep the lid on all of this. If it wasn't then they were stupid for missing a very important deadline. 

We also understand that Donna Hall has had to inform the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Council missing the deadline and judgement could just now go against them. Deputy Leader Keith Cunliffe is telling people that if this happens he will make sure that Donna pays the bill for her failings. Mind you he has even said go and get her. As I have written before it seems he doesn't like her more than most especially when they had a big argument in MAnchester when Donna called herself the Leader of Wigan Council only for the Deputy Leader to stand up in front of every one there and say no you are not. You are the Chief Executive and Cllr David Molyneux is the Leader. On David when I spoke with him about the matter and I said about we were about to issue legal papers he said Gareth do what you need to do on this one.

We will know more on which way the judge wants to go on this either let the judgement stand or set it aside and this will be later next week or the early part of the week after, but we will keep you informed.