Neighbourhood activist labelled public nuisance over go-nowhere litigation

Belmont resident Eedra Zey, 63, sought compensatory, aggravated and exemplary damages over claims that police trespassed on her land.

She also accused police of non-battery assault, false imprisonment, misfeasance in public office, a breach of privacy, and breaching the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights.

However, Acting District Court Judge Leonard Levy SC has found last week that two police officers who knocked on her door to ask her to move her car were simply carrying out their lawful duty as police officers.

Her reaction to their presence was bizarre, Judge Levy said, and left the officers bewildered and frustrated.

The incident took place after Ms Zey parked her car in front of a gateway and school access point on Albert Street, Belmont, in September, 2019.

She, and others, had taken exception to route the the heavy trucks were using, so she left her car there on purpose "to pursue an agenda of neighbourhood vigilantism by civil protest", Judge Levy said.

Council rangers first called police to intervene at 8.21am on September 17, 2019, after finding Ms Zey's car parked across the main entrance to Belmont High School.

It was causing a "major obstruction" to the building site of a $20 million revamp of the school. Rangers who had spoken to Ms Zey had found her aggressive and abusive, police records say.

"The owner ... is deliberately parking across the driveway entrance to Belmont High School as a protest to trucks travelling up Evans Street to the work site," police noted at the time.

The car was towed, but police were called to intervene again on September 21.

Uniformed police opened and walked through a gate to knock on her door, and used "polite and respectful language". She refused to engage, reacting ''irrationally and unreasonably'' Judge Levy said.

In court, Ms Zey resorted to grandiosity, exaggerated, avoided questions and gave objectively incorrect and melodramatic evidence, the judge said.

A "trifling trespass" occurred for a few minutes in the time between Ms Zey asking the police to leave, and them making their way off her property, the judge said. But that was an "inescapable consequence" of the underlying public mischief of the position of her vehicle, Judge Levy said.

"In that sense, the plaintiff brought the technical trespass upon herself, by reason of her aberrant uncivil and unco-operative behaviour," Judge Levy said.

Regarding claims of assault, she was located safely behind her closed and locked glass door, and the police were not behaving in a threatening manner, and that was clear both in the video evidence produced by police who activated body-worn cameras at the scene, and the audio recording produced by Ms Zey herself, the judge said.

"According to the video footage, not even her dog showed any apparent signs of apprehension towards the police officers," Judge Levy said.

"The police officers were in full uniform. The plaintiff was located behind her closed locked door. She refused to open that door to them. She herself had behaved in a threatening manner towards them.

"The officers had simply explained to her that they were there to speak to her about the position of her car which had to be moved. After knocking on her door a number of times and asking her to open the door, they left."

There was nothing about the manner or conduct of police to indicate the imminent threat of force or violence and Ms Zey's claim was exaggerated and untruthful, Judge Levy said.

The judge described Ms Zey's "aberrant litigation conduct" as uncooperative and time wasting, resulting in significant burdens on public resources.

"Had the plaintiff co-operated with the police officers and engaged with them to abate the nuisance created by the location of her parked vehicle she would have saved herself the bother of having to deal with a parking infringement notice and the cost of retrieving her vehicle from the place where it had been impounded after it was towed there at the direction of the police officers who were left with no other option of abating that nuisance."

Ms Zey had failed to show up at court on at least six separate occasions and her case became "needlessly protracted", Judge Levy said, occupying disproportionate court time, in a series of "unfortunate events" involving "an extra-ordinary number" of interlocutory listings, intra-hearing delays, and applications of varying kinds.