Grift Watch
Investigating and exposing Internet grifters, scams and fraud.

Stephanie Hayden, part 3

Table of contents

Stephanie Hayden is currently suing me for defamation, harassment, and breach of UK GDPR. I publish this in the public interest as a citizen journalist given Hayden is a lawyer, and a controversial self-styled public figure, whose conduct has raised many questions and engendered much spirited debate from members of the public.

I also publish this to stand up for freedom of expression and freedom of the press. It is important that our society can ask hard, difficult questions of self-styled public figures on controversial topics such as serial litigation involving people exercising freedom of expression rights as well as other uncomfortable matters such as how Hayden finances an outwardly opulent lifestyle of international travel while claiming to be too poor to pay court fees.

The premise of this article is simple: How can Hayden afford to travel so extensively internationally on seemingly First/Business-class level tickets, and afford to live in London and feed and clothe and sustain oneself, and yet also be too poor to afford to pay the (quite substantial, at times) court fees in the many cases Hayden has filed since August 2018? How can Hayden afford what appears to be a substantial expensive lifestyle while also being too poor to afford to pay court fees to sue people?

None of it makes sense to me. It's utterly baffling. Let's walk through this together.

On 14 August 2018, Hayden established a company called I A Legal (SRH) Limited with £25,000 in share capital invested. It is unclear where the £25,000 originally came from, but I believe it came from money obtained from previous clients that Hayden failed to return for whatever reason, as established in another article. The reason this is important is because the Help with Fees scheme limits you to having less than £16,000 in savings. This includes any stocks and shares you own (including stocks and shares you own in your own companies).

Help with Fees

I think it is common knowledge that Hayden only files court claims with the benefit of Help with Fees. This is covered in my earlier article on Help with Fees which goes into the criteria required to qualify for Help with Fees. This means that Hayden doesn't pay any money to file a claim. You have to be on quite a limited income to qualify for full fee remission as Hayden does. I don't believe Hayden qualifies once the shares in the company mentioned above are properly taken into account. It is difficult to understand how and why Hayden has qualified to date compared to the lifestyle flaunted on social media in that same time period.

The cases Hayden has filed since August 2018

  1. Hayden v Linehan, filed on 1 October 2018
  2. Hayden v Scottow, filed on 19 December 2018
  3. Hayden v Associated Newspapers Limited, filed on 19 February 2019
  4. Hayden v Mumsnet Limited, filed on 8 April 2019
  5. Hayden v Farrow, filed on 29 April 2019
  6. Hayden v Wojtczak, filed on 29 July 2019
  7. Hayden v Moody, filed on 13 September 2019
  8. Hayden v Kelly, filed on 12 June 2020
  9. Hayden v Meesam, filed on 26 June 2020
  10. Hayden v Yalland, filed on 7 July 2020
  11. Hayden v Farrow, filed on 7 September 2020
  12. Hayden v Duckworth, filed on 19 October 2020
  13. Hayden v Dickenson, filed on 30 October 2020
  14. Hayden v Walsh, filed on 23 November 2020
  15. Hayden v Moody, filed on 8 September 2021
  16. Hayden v Moody, filed on 14 February 2022
  17. Hayden v Family Education Trust, filed on 18 October 2022
  18. Hayden v Farrow, filed on 6 July 2022
  19. Hayden v Arsuago Rato, filed on 18 November 2022
  20. Hayden v Richards-Hill, filed in October 2023
  21. Hayden v Doyle, filed in August/September 2023
  22. Hayden v Heath, filed on 15 March 2024
  23. Hayden v Heath, filed on 19 March 2024
  24. Hayden v Linehan, filed on 3 June 2024
  25. Hayden v Doyle, filed in November 2024

Summing up:

2019 and 2020 were particularly busy years with 5 claims filed in the High Court in 2019, and 7 claims filed in the High Court in 2020.

With the caveat that the court fees would have been different in previous years, I have calculated some figures that would have normally had to have been paid for the claims. Hayden was able to avoid paying these using the Help with Fees scheme.

The court fees

11 of the claims above were for £100,000 in damages which would cost 5% of the claim, equating to around £50,000 in fees alone. This doesn't include the trial fee - just the fee to issue the claim. Other claims were for £10,000 attracting a fee of £455 to issue them.

That's not including the higher fees of £10,000 that Hayden would normally have had to pay to sue me for defamation (as Hayden is suing me for more than £200,000).

This is a scandalous, unreasonable and extortionate waste of taxpayer money. Over £50,000 by my calculations that Hayden has managed to avoid paying to pursue what I consider to be petty, vexatious, and harassing litigation because someone's feelings were hurt. It smacks my gob to consider to what better use that money could have been put to, if Hayden had paid the proper court fees.

Now, let's look at the lifestyle Hayden was flaunting during this time.

Unpaid costs

Hayden has a lengthy history of not paying costs when Hayden loses court cases. As of December 2024, as far as I know, Hayden still owes approximately £30,000 to the Daily Mail, approximately £20,000 to the Family Education Trust, and there may be others out there who are owed costs when Hayden has sued them and lost.

A jet-set lifestyle of international travel

Since August 2018, Hayden has openly and publicly travelled to a variety of different countries, sometimes for substantial periods of time. How Hayden has funded this is unclear. It does not sit easily with the fee remissions claimed for the court cases filed in that time period either.

These were all taken from Hayden's Twitter account. The dates aren't entirely accurate as a result, and I've had to make some estimates about the dates and times.

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

Approximately 100 days, or almost a third of the year, spent abroad in 2024. As a very rough estimate, I reckon this amount of travel would have cost around £5,000-10,000 or more. It's not just flights, it's hotel rooms or other accommodation, food and drink, spending money, travel money for taxis, etc. and so on; it all adds up. Where is the money for that coming from? How does it square with the Help with Fees requirements?

Specific examples

Let's look at some specific examples.

Hayden v Linehan - 3 June 2024

On 3 June 2024, Hayden sued Graham Linehan in the High Court. We know this because that's the date the online court record gives for when the claim form was filed.

So, Hayden would have had to apply for a fee remission certificate on or after 3 June 2024. However, going by Hayden's own social media posts, on 3 June 2024, Hayden was apparently enjoying the delights of Europe. Hayden flew to Amsterdam on 17 May 2024, and then got the train to Germany, and then travelled onwards to Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, before ending with a flight back to London seemingly on 4 June 2024, just a day after filing the claim against Mr Linehan in the High Court.

Does that strike you as the lifestyle of someone who is too poor to afford to pay the necessary court fees to sue someone? How many people do you know file court claims while seemingly on holiday enjoying travelling to at least six different countries? I suspect very few.

Hayden v Duckworth - 19 October 2020, Hayden v Dickenson - 30 October 2020

Hayden was in Poland for an unknown period of time in October 2020 yet somehow was still able to sue Duckworth and Dickenson that same month. How? Who can afford to go abroad and yet be too poor to pay at the very least £626 (the cost of an application for an injunction against Dickenson), plus the cost of suing Duckworth (it's not clear what the fee was for that case).

Other lifestyle concerns

Hayden does not appear to have a job and Hayden's company is seemingly dormant. We know Hayden gets PIP because it was reported as such in court. Hayden has claimed to need to travel internationally for "work" and "professional duties" without specifying exactly what that "work" or "professional duties" are. These duties appear to be connected almost exclusively to South Africa, but at the moment it's not clear how. How is Hayden affording the rent on a London apartment of some approximate £2,500-3,000 a month? Even with a flatmate, there are still substantial costs to living in London. This doesn't include clothing, entertainment, travel, food, etc. - all the necessary costs of living.

On 7 November 2020, Hayden seems to have purchased an electric car, allegedly funded by a "substantial settlement from the BBC". What this settlement was for remains unknown, if it ever actually happened. It is difficult to understand how the capital from this supposed settlement didn't breach the savings requirement for Help with Fees given Hayden went on to sue Joani Walsh that month and relied on Help with Fees, given that even a second-hand electric car was retailing for approximately £8,000 at the time.

Hayden appears to have a history of staying at the RAF Club on arguably expensive occasions such as New Years Eve and regularly eating meals there. These meals are not that cheap: £16 for breakfast as of January 2024. A three course meal is approximately £40 per person. Is this really the lifestyle of someone in claimed poverty? I think it's unlikely. I don't think most people would be eating out fairly frequently at £40 per person at an exclusive club in Central London, while also having a jet-set lifestyle of extensive foreign travel, and paying rent on a London flat, and so on, especially while claiming to be too poor to afford to pay the court fees for suing people.

Per Nicklin J at [71] in Hayden v Dickenson [2020] EWHC 3291 (QB) (02 December 2020): "The Defendant raised questions (by posting similar issues raised by others) about how the Claimant could afford to fund her lifestyle and substantial litigation (Messages 5 and 7), which was not an unreasonable question for a layperson to ask."

Conclusion

It is difficult to understand how Hayden can afford a jet-set lifestyle while being too poor to pay court fees. Where does the money come from? How can Hayden spend almost a third of the year abroad in 2024 alone, yet not afford to pay any court fees? These questions are ones that members of the public have been asking for a long time and they don't have any satisfactory answers. I am sure I am not alone in thinking that Hayden is "thumbing [Hayden's] nose" at the judicial system by flaunting this jet-set lifestyle of international intrigue while claiming to be too poor to pay into the court system. It is irritating and frustrating to witness what I consider to be abuse on such a grand scale. So many people can't afford to get justice, and here's Hayden suing people left, right, and centre over hurt feelings.

Of course, it's not for me to tell you what to think. I invite you to sit and reflect on the amount of money Hayden has avoided paying in court fees, and the amount of travelling Hayden has done in that same time period, and the lifestyle Hayden claims to have in court filings and on social media, and draw your own conclusions.