5 Things I've Learned from Suing People
5 Things I've Learned from Suing People
Not just any people. Big wigs. Institutional gaslighters. Property operators who run their front as Instagrammable glitz, but keep their back like a Ponzi scheme.
Storytelling time: Two years ago, I decided that I needed an immediate, visceral outlet for activistic energy. Previously, I worked in what is called 'formal high politics': the sphere of politics that courses its political will through institutions, mass leverage, and global diplomatic theatres. While they remain useful, they're often slow, marginal, and the results are rarely immediate. It's the theatre for marginal revolutions; meanwhile, the outside is the theatre of the bigger ones.
So I needed an outlet for what I call 'volitional energy,' which is a phrase that does not exist but should. When I say 'volitional energy,' I'm referring to the inherent civic force within every individual that drives deliberate action toward their vision of common good. Their vision of collective well-being and justice.
Volitional energy is psychological and moral momentum. It's the thing that transforms personal conviction into political choices – loosely, the inner power that compels people to challenge injustice, hold institutions accountable, and actively participate in shaping society according to their principles.
Volitional energy – and we all have it – is kinetic. It demands expression through concrete choices and sustained efforts, even when such actions require personal sacrifice or risk. It is both the fuel of democratic participation and the force that holds power structures accountable to those they claim to serve. After getting fed up, and experiencing various institutional exploitation of my own, I decided that I needed a 'hobby' where I could channel my volitional power to something speedier and more visceral. That 'hobby' is suing people.
I mean 'suing' in the pedestrian sense; it includes litigation, yes, but it also includes filing proceedings for regulatory oversight. Reporting corporate crimes. Exposing and isolating institutional rot through various legal means.
It's been two years of doing this, and the learning is massive, which I endeavour to share in trickles as we go along. I find that there is a demand for a masterclass or a book called Legal Thinking for Non-Lawyers, which would equip non-legal people with the confidence to wield the law without being a lawyer. I'd like to write that book one day, but for now Substack posts would do.
These are some things I've 'learned' from suing people. Though, if we're being "technical," these learnings are not really new. These are things we already know on some level from intuition. We're here merely articulating them as speaking truth with precision anchors it deeper into the body and the collective unconscious:
1. Business models in property thrive on people being inconvenienced. Learned helplessness. Legal illiteracy.
The entire short-stay and rental industry operates on a fundamental assumption: that tenants and guests will be too inconvenienced, too legally illiterate, or too financially constrained to challenge their violations. They've built profit margins around this calculated helplessness.
When you actually exercise your volitional energy and fight back, you discover that many of their "policies" crumble under the lightest legal scrutiny. The £12,000+ invoice I was saddled with for early termination? Criminal and baseless. The elaborate security protocols forcing disabled guests through digital obstacle courses? Unlawful discrimination theater. The "no refund" policies that ignore statutory consumer rights? Legal fiction.
These operators count on you not knowing that statutory rights override contracts. They bank on you accepting their invented rules as legitimate law. They profit from your ignorance of housing law, disability rights, and basic consumer protections.
2. Legal ignorance takes many forms, but all forms are equally frustrating.
Within the roster of people I've sued, I have encountered a spectacular range of legal incompetence:
The "We're so nice please don't sue us" defense
"You're suing us. But we've been so nice to you!" I'm sorry, but charisma does not override compliance. Your warm and pleasant concierge does not cancel out that you breached the UK Equality Act, treated your property operation as a massive data farm, or covered up sexual harassment complaints.
In these cases, I explained to them in pedagogical specificity what they did wrong, but they could not metabolise what was being said. If they cannot integrate basic legal principles into their business model, what else can't they integrate?
With some of the mid-tier landlords and operators that I've come across, they genuinely believe that their niceness cancels out statutory violations. There is a misconception within the culture: that emotional energy should override volitional power.
The "blatant incrimination" energy
This incredulous disposition of: "Wait, that can't possibly be illegal, right?"
One property manager of a famous chain that I will name after the lawsuit is over admitted to me that he was disseminating protected data to unauthorised parties. Another told me they couldn't possibly be discriminatory because their staff "are made of diverse people from different backgrounds" – as if employee demographics immunize you against implementing exclusionary policies.
The type that cannot metabolise that illegality is baked into their design
I encountered a luxury short-stay operation with elaborate security protocols that prevented entry to hotel guests who had already fully paid for accommodation. Their system required guests to download WhatsApp, upload photos, join groups, and complete facial recognition scans – systematically excluding persons with disabilities, elderly people, and anyone who couldn't comply with their digital obstacle course.
When I wrote formal complaints educating them about these violations, they responded with: "We are not discriminatory here. Our staff are made of diverse people from different backgrounds. We can't be called discriminatory."
They could not metabolise that:
Discrimination is not about proactively hating groups of people
Discrimination is not about "being different"
Discrimination is about creating artifacts and situations where you systematically exclude specific groups from accessing something
Having diverse employees does not immunise you against discriminatory practices any more than it prevents the implementation of exclusionary systems. Discrimination occurs through policies and procedures that create exclusionary outcomes – regardless of staff demographics or conscious intent.
The type that invents its own laws and concepts
"Reasonable Security" was the defense offered by the luxury accommodation when challenged about their unlawful verification protocols. This is not a real legal concept – it's a fabricated perversion of "reasonable accommodation." You cannot randomly make up legal frameworks and expect them to hold up under scrutiny.
When property operators start inventing legal concepts like "reasonable security," you know you're dealing with amateur-hour compliance theater assembled by people with no grounding in actual law.
3. Legal grievance is often (falsely) dismissed as just emotional grievance
One of the most insidious tactics used to deflect legitimate legal grievances is the deliberate conflation of emotional response with emotional motivation. When confronted with statutory violations, institutional failures, or clear breaches of duty, bad actors routinely deploy phrases like:
"I'm so sorry we upset you! But this is totally legal."
"This isn't a statutory violation, it's just your emotions!"
"This isn't a real sexual harassment complaint, you're just hysterical!"
This represents a fundamental misunderstanding – or willful misrepresentation – of how law and emotion actually intersect.
The law explicitly recognizes that emotional harm can constitute legal injury. Sexual harassment law exists precisely because emotional trauma in the workplace has material consequences. Disability discrimination protections acknowledge that psychological distress can be both evidence of violation and grounds for remedy. Housing law recognizes that habitability isn't just about physical safety – it encompasses psychological well-being and human dignity.
Yet when someone exercises their volitional energy to challenge these violations, they're told they're being "emotional" or "hysterical" – as if having an appropriate emotional response to injustice somehow negates the legal validity of their claim. This is backwards. The presence of emotional impact often strengthens rather than weakens a legal case, because it demonstrates real harm occurred.
The confusion stems from conflating emotional response (a natural reaction to harm) with emotional motivation(acting purely from feelings rather than legal grounds). When institutions say "you're just being emotional," they're trying to reframe legitimate legal enforcement as irrational personal grievance.
The correct relationship between law and emotions
Emotions can be evidence of legal wrongs, but they are not the basis for determining whether those wrongs occurred. A sexual harassment complaint isn't invalid because the complainant feels distressed – the distress may actually prove the severity of the violation. A housing habitability claim isn't weakened by the tenant's frustration – that frustration may demonstrate the property's impact on their well-being.
Law without emotional investment in justice is just bureaucracy, while emotion without legal grounding is just complaint. True civic power emerges when both align – when righteous anger meets rigorous legal analysis, when personal harm connects to systemic accountability.
When institutions respond to legal grievances with emotional dismissal, they reveal their own inability to distinguish between the messenger and the message. They mistake the volitional energy driving accountability for mere personal grievance, failing to recognize that this energy often represents the enforcement mechanism democracy depends upon.
The irony is palpable: those who dismiss legal complaints as "emotional" are often the ones acting irrationally by ignoring clear statutory obligations. They're more invested in linguistic defensiveness than legal compliance.
4. Property operators think they can hide behind contracts
Property operators and corrupt institutions often think they can hide behind their Terms and Contracts. Their leases. They think the contract alone entitles them to treat their property regime like a fiefdom. So they act as judge, jury, executioner.
Airbnb Operator: "We have a strict no refund policy!"
Complainant: "But look, I'm about to die and I need that money for healthcare!"
Airbnb Operator: "Sorry, no dice."
The complainant has a strong claim because:
Contracts can be fallible. Contracts can be deemed misrepresentative of the law.
Statutory laws override contracts. In contemporary states, there is no such thing as a miniature fiefdom where the operator is judge, jury, executioner.
You'd think this would be common sense, but the frequency with which I encountered this was staggering.
I was forced to sign an early termination waiver while medically vulnerable, with property managers essentially saying: "sign this document waiving your rights, or remain trapped in a situation we know is medically harmful." Under multiple legal principles, this constitutes duress, lack of genuine consent, and bad faith contract formation. You cannot use someone's vulnerability to extract waivers of rights you violated in the first place.
When I explained the illegality of forcing tenants to pay early termination fees (you cannot say 'no exit,' then proceed to monetise the exit), property managers responded with willful ignorance. They cannot claim contractual estoppel while simultaneously creating unfair advantages where they control both the rule and its exceptions.
5. Managers falsely bifurcate "management" and "legal"
Complainant: "Your management is overriding statutory rights."
Manager: "Ah sorry, legal talk does not apply here but we can reduce it to a management issue."
Complainant: "But no. All management issues are also subject to law. You cannot bifurcate the two. You cannot say: Because I'm management, I don't do law."
There is no such meaningful bifurcation. Every management decision exists within legal frameworks. When managers claim they "don't do law," they're essentially claiming immunity from the statutory obligations that govern their industry.
This false separation allows them to dismiss legitimate legal complaints as mere "customer service issues" when they're really legal matters stipulating violated rights, exposing them to genuine liability. One is a customer service issue; the other is a statutory violation. The latter is far more serious than the former.
When property managers told me my vocal rest was preventing resolution after I'd made over 20 documented phone calls explaining their legal violations, they were engaging in narrative manipulation. For serious formal complaints, written documentation is qualitatively superior to oral communication because it creates a paper trail submittable as documentary evidence when matters escalate.
The question becomes: Why do they prefer phone calls over paper trails? What are they afraid of leaving behind? Phone calls aren't recorded. Why do they prefer leaving no evidentiary trail? Suspicious.
The Strategic Nature of Institutional Dismissal
What I've learned from suing people is that most of these deflection tactics are not accidental – they're strategic. The emotional dismissal, the invented legal concepts, the contract hiding, the management-legal bifurcation – these are designed to make complainants question their own judgment and abandon valid claims.
They're banking on you not understanding that volitional energy wielded with legal sophistication is one of the most powerful forces for accountability in our society. They're counting on you accepting their theater of compliance instead of demanding actual compliance.
But here's what they don't understand: the person exercising their volitional energy often knows something their dismissers don't. That this energy, when properly channeled through legal frameworks, doesn't just resolve individual grievances – it creates systemic change. It forces institutions to improve their practices. It protects future victims.
Every time you exercise your volitional energy against institutional incompetence, you're not just solving your own problem – you're making the system more accountable for everyone.
That's why they work so hard to dismiss you as "emotional" or "difficult." Because they know that your volitional energy, properly applied, is existentially threatening to their exploitative business models.
The beautiful irony is that their very attempts to dismiss and diminish your complaints often provide the evidence you need to strengthen your case. Their legal ignorance, their narrative manipulation, their willful violations – they build your case for you through their own incompetence.
So when institutions try to gaslight you into thinking your legitimate legal grievances are just emotional complaints, remember: you're not the problem. Your volitional energy isn't the problem. Their inability to meet basic legal standards is the problem.
And that's a problem worth solving.
