Sean David Morton takes his best shot

Which is the odd man out?

• Lloret de Mar
• Tossa de Mar
• Estoril
• Estoppel
• L'Estartit
• Benidorm
• Cambrils

The answer is Estoppel—all the others are Iberian beach resorts.

         Estoppel is the legal doctrine holding that a respondent in court cannot make a proclamation or statement that conflicts with a statement he/she made earlier in the same case. The doctrine extends to the court itself—in other words, a judge may not contradict himself or herself in court.

        Sean David Morton is using the doctrine of judicial estoppel as the cornerstone of his appeal against his conviction, in September 2017, on 28 counts of fraud. Morton, who has claimed to be "a legal scholar," produced an 18-page affidavit from his prison cell (and according to him, got so stressed in the process that he had a heart attack.)

        I make no claim to legal scholarship, in fact my only contact with the law was an arraignment on a charge of "drunk and disorderly" fifty years ago, after I had barked at a police dog in Kentish Town, London. But, reading Morton's tortured prose, I can't see he has the ghost of a chance with this. Stripped down to essentials, his claim is that the court trying his case made a statement that was in conflict with a statement made by a different court in a different case. I don't think that works as judicial estoppel, but I may be corrected.

        The prior case was against a man called Gordon Hall, who was apparently the original theorist of scamming investors out of $millions. Morton testifies that he paid Hall $6,000 for that information. He now says, in the affidavit, that he is as much a victim of Hall as are the investors whose savings he stole, and that accusing him of fraud is in conflict with the earlier accusation of fraud against Hall. He writes:

"Sean testified he felt he was defrauded by Hall. If Sean is considered culpable and not defrauded in this case then Hall's ... conviction in the other case is invalid because the clients are not defrauded by Hall like the government and judges agreed. This case is barred by the doctrine of absurdity, issue preclusion and judicial or equitable estoppel. Sean contends that this manipulation of the evidence deprived him of due process and rendered his trial fundamentally unfair." (Motion for summary disposition, 21 November 2018, pp. 3-4)

        It stands to reason that there's no explicit or implicit conflict in stating that both Hall and Morton are guilty. We may not have to wait too long for the appeals court to tell Morton "Get back to your jail cell, STFU, and serve out your time" (or words very much to that effect).