Frequent filer keeps the legal system busy despite 'vexatious litigant' status
Raghvendra “Raj” Singh was placed on a California list of vexatious litigants in 2003.
But the 51-year-old has found various alternatives that have allowed him not only to continue to file civil cases but to do so for free, KXTV reports.
Singh receives tax bills for 24 properties owned in trust or by his wife and had an adjusted gross income of nearly $600,000 in 2010, according to an Internal Revenue Service audit. Nonetheless, Singh has claimed poverty and repeatedly gotten fee waivers in state and federal court, the station says.
Meanwhile, although he is required as a vexatious litigant to have any new lawsuit filed by a lawyer, he is doing so only at the outset of cases before substituting himself as his own counsel, one opposing lawyer contended in a brief last year.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge Shelleyanne Chang issued a 2009 order for the sale of Singh’s primary residence to satisfy a judgment. She wrote that his filings made “frequent use of aliases, such as Rag, Ram, Roc, Kaus and Archana Singh in order to confuse courts and opposing parties.”
And attorney Steven Finley, who is defending a property owner who has condominium units in the same building as Singh, says he maintains a separate inbox to accommodate the voluminous material he receives from Singh, KXTV reports.
Finley takes credit for getting Singh on the state list of frivolous filers and says he isn’t aware of any case in which Singh has prevailed. However, the attorney is frustrated that more isn’t being done to prevent Singh from ongoing involvement in what Finley and other litigation opponents view as a significant waste of time and misuse of the justice system.
Singh declined to provide financial information to a reporter for the station unless he was paid $5,000. However, he says he is acting for the benefit of the public as a “private attorney general” in bringing a number of suits, such as a lawsuit seeking class action status over code-enforcement activities by the city of Sacramento.
“You’re a nice reporter, but you don’t know the law,” he told a reporter for KXTV.
