Omorotu Francis Ayovuare, a Nigerian-born surveyor, is apparently Britain’s most litigious man. By 2003, he had clocked up 82 race discrimination claims, and won only two of them. In the US, Billy Roy Tyler from Nebraska claims to be the “greatest writ-writer in the world”. He has sued everyone from his neighbour to the Governor. In the 1990s, he issued proceedings in 113 federal cases during one two-year period.

But both have been trumped by Taso Hadijiev, 74, and his brother Asen, 75, from Malka Arda in Bulgaria. They began suing each other in 1968 in a dispute about a land inheritance from their parents. They are still at it, and have now litigated over 200 times.

Today, neither has the money to leave the home they grew up in because they have used all their funds paying lawyers. A neighbour said: "They go to court for any old reason they can dream up — and none of it is ever true, they just want to sue each other.”

Recently they divided their family home with barbed-wire. This isn’t the first case of litigants who live under the same roof ensuring that while “versus” divides them in court, a barricade divides them at home. It isn’t often that a judge orders such a partition to be built, but it has been done. In New York in 2006, Chana and Simon Taub were going through a bitter divorce. For family and social reasons, they both wanted to remain in their house. The court heard their constant bickering and exchanges, such as this one:

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SIMON: She has 300 pairs of shoes

CHANA: He has had my phone bugged. I’m not interested in shoes

SIMON: Maybe it’s 299; I didn’t count

The judge ordered the construction of a wall in the couple’s house to separate them in their living areas.

Professor Gary Slapper is Director of the Centre for Law at The Open University

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