Since Vito Zepinic was declared a vexatious litigant in 2017 with a judge declaring “his obsessive behaviour is wasteful and destructive … it must be stopped,” Zepinic has chalked up another 23 losses to add to dozens of previous failures.
Zepinic, 70, who has criminal convictions for passing himself off as a psychiatrist, was declared a vexatious litigant in relation to 15 years of failed litigation against his builder.
Vito Zepinic.Credit: Kate Geraghty
In 2014, a court-appointed trustee (who Zepinic has also sued, unsuccessfully) sold Zepinic’s Turramurra house for $3 million. The builders initially sued in 2008 over a $230,000 payment that was owing. They received $1.7 million from the house sale, largely for the legal costs they’d subsequently incurred.
Justice Michael Pembroke, declaring Zepinic a vexatious litigant and so preventing him from taking further action against his builders, said that Zepinic’s claims against them were “hopeless … indulgent and irrational” and smacking of “ill-considered obsessiveness”.
This has not stopped Zepinic.
Last month he was ordered to pay the costs of his former lawyers after he tried – unsuccessfully – to sue them for professional negligence, seeking damages of $323,000.
Justice Stephen Rothman was highly critical of Zepinic using his lawsuit against his SLF Lawyers to re-agitate his failed dispute with his builders. “Despite the Vexatious Orders currently in place, the plaintiff has continued to institute Court proceedings that relate to his long-since concluded disputes.”
Zepinic also claimed his former lawyers were negligent in failing to sue The Sydney Morning Herald for defamation over a 2017 article about his vexatious litigations.
The court heard that barrister Stewart Littlemore, KC, had informed SLF Lawyers that there were “no good prospects of success in any action relating to the SMH article”.
Meanwhile, other judges have suggested Zepinic be declared a vexatious litigant over his ongoing futile legal battles against medical authorities over the refusal to let him practice as a psychologist.
In 2008, a Sydney magistrate found Zepinic guilty of six counts of falsely holding himself out to be a doctor. He avoided a jail term and was instead placed on a good behaviour bond.
In 2010, he was struck off as a psychologist after he was found to have given false evidence to Burwood Local Court stating he had a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Sarajevo when he had just a degree in psychology.
In London in 2013, Zepinic was convicted of fraud for failing to disclose his criminal convictions in Australia. Having been struck off here, Zepinic had landed a prestigious position as a senior lecturer in psychiatry at Queen Mary University of London.
Having already failed numerous times to regain his psychologist’s licence, in 2020 he appealed to the Supreme Court claiming the 2008 certificates of conviction “were fraudulent.”
Justice Natalie Adams rejected his appeal, saying that Zepinic had “engaged in a pattern of misleading conduct,” had “forged documents and signatures” and provided false and misleading information to various authorities.
In July this year, Associate Justice Joanne Harrison rejected Zepinic’s fresh appeal, suggesting another vexatious litigant declaration should be considered.
Last month, Zepinic lost yet another case when District Court judge Judith Gibson dismissed his appeal against a finding that the $10,000 cash he gave to a former partner was a gift not a loan.
Ljiljana Mitrovic, herself a former doctor, told the court she had met Zepinic, who “told her he was a psychiatrist,” in 2018 and that an “intimate relationship” followed. It ended in early 2022 when Mitrovic read newspaper articles about Zepinic. “One of these articles, written by Kate McClymont, shocked her, and she decided not to have any relationship with the plaintiff in the future,” said Gibson in her judgment.
Gibson upheld the decision made in June by an assessor from the Small Claims Division of the Local Court. The assessor said Zepinic had sent the court hundreds of pages describing his qualifications, employment history and general good character but had failed to mention “the circumstances where courts in Queensland, New South Wales and the United Kingdom had all made findings that he was not a truthful witness”.
Zepinic has been ordered to pay Mitrovic’s costs.
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