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A struck-off doctor, who has been declared a vexatious litigant, has been prevented from acting on behalf of a woman who is suing several doctors over the treatment of her bunions and rashes.
Over the past 25 years, Michael Bar-Mordecai has failed on 42 occasions to have his medical licence reinstated.
Michael Bar-Mordecai leaving the Supreme Court in 2004.Credit: Peter Rae
In 1994, Bar-Mordecai’s 83-year-old patient, Eveline Hillston, died six minutes after the Clovelly GP had given her a shot of morphine. Bar-Mordecai, 36 years her junior, claimed the pair had been having sex four times a week and, as her de facto partner, he was entitled to her estate.
In 1998, the judge hearing Bar-Mordecai’s claim to Hillston’s estate made note of his “highly unusual” medical records, in which he had listed Hillston’s wealth at $2 million; stated he was her de facto; and that she was a virgin until the age of 72 as she had never had sex with her late husband. According to Bar-Mordecai’s records, she was now having “Coitus 4 x week”, with “100% Orgasm Frequency”.
Finding him an unreliable and untruthful witness, Justice Cliff Einstein rejected his claim that in 1989 Hillston had torn up her will and that she had said: “I want to leave you my whole estate because you are the only one who ever cared for me and I love you, darling.”
Bar-Mordecai was struck off in September 2000 after a tribunal found he had treated Hillston for more than a decade while they were in a personal relationship, and that he had obtained more than $1 million in cash and property from her.
John Neville as the titular character in the 1980s comedy The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.Credit: Columbia Pictures
As well as his futile attempts to get his practising certificate back, Bar-Mordecai’s “avalanche of litigation” also involved 40 attempts to re-litigate his claim on Hillston’s estate, with only one minor success.
The 79-year-old has been declared a vexatious litigant, which means he is barred from instituting new legal proceedings without special permission from a court.
On April 18, 2019, Julia Zhu commenced proceedings against a GP and a dermatologist over a condition called extramammary Paget’s disease, a chronic eczema-like rash of the skin around the genital regions. Zhu also complained about the treatment of her bunions.
In October 2023, Justice Richard Weinstein ruled that a tutor be appointed, as Zhu was not capable of managing her affairs. Her son Norman Zhou was initially appointed but, due to living in Shanghai, he stepped down.
In August 2025, Bar-Mordecai – who had accompanied Zhu to some of her medical appointments – applied to be appointed Zhu’s tutor on the grounds that, as a former practitioner, he had “relevant expertise and insight into the subject matter of the proceedings”.
“I am satisfied that Mr Bar-Mordecai was dishonest in his application to be appointed as tutor,” said Justice Peter Garling. Credit: Nic Gibson
Bar-Mordecai also said that a 2004 Court of Appeal judgment was “ultimately resolved in my favour … recognising my de facto marriage and overturning prior rulings”.
Justice Peter Garling said this claim was “entirely misleading” and dishonest.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” said the judge, who said Bar-Mordecai’s litigation in that previous case was hopeless and unsuccessful.
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Garling went on to quote some of the previous findings against Bar-Mordecai. Justice John Bryson had said: “Some things he has asserted seem like fantasies from the travels of Baron Munchausen.” Bryson also said he did not believe that Bar-Mordecai “is in truth a person whom fate and malignity have exposed to an astonishing number of improbable circumstances, lies and hostilities”.
In the current court proceedings, Zhu’s son was acting as his mother’s tutor when documents were sent to the defendants making wild accusations, including that medical records had been falsified and that a medical expert had “knowingly relied on false instructions to produce a fabricated peer review report”.
The defendant’s solicitor was accused of being “part of a broader conspiracy to conceal negligence, mislead the judiciary and defend the plaintiff’s claim through deceit and misuse of court process”.
Norman Zhou told the defendants that he had not written or sent these documents. Instead, they were sent from an email address of a person using the title of “Associate to Mr Zhou”.
Garling said “extravagantly phrased claims of fraud, conspiracy, deception and criminality” alleged against the doctors, their lawyers and a medical expert were very similar to the language used previously by Bar-Mordecai in his failed court actions.
The judge concluded that the struck-off GP “was dishonest in his application to be appointed as tutor”.
“The very fact that Mr Bar-Mordecai is the subject of a vexatious proceedings order, which has been maintained for 20 years, during which period it has been broadened and varied, is itself and without more, a very good reason why he would not be appointed as tutor to conduct any proceedings,” Garling said.
The plaintiff was ordered to pay costs, and the matter has been re-listed for a status hearing on December 10.
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