Note: We do not know exactly what the proper place for people like this is in the alphabet, but this seems as good a place as any; Lyle Hartford van Dyke himself has in any case no intentions of following any rules. Now, the name of Lyle Hartford van Dyke may be pretty obscure to most people, but in some circles he’s a legendary practitioner of pseudolaw (this kind). He has even published an instruction book on how to file nuisance liens against government employees and judges who don’t like you (him) and runs the National Association for Commercial Accountability, a one-man organization that mostly sells his leaflets and advice. He also claims to have invented the dialysis machine, sort of randomly by the way.
His liens, styled as “Common Law Lien on the Property and Hand Signature of the Following Persons” (and described by a judge as “meaningless” and “of no legal force or effect”), were nullified and permanently enjoined in US v. Van Dyke (D Ore 1983). Van Dyke also showed up and presented himself as “a self-described lawyer without a license” and an expert on nuisance liens in the Montana Freemen trial but was ordered out of the courthouse by the judge (against whom he had already filed a comprehensive lien). He also announced that he had issued more than $3 billion in his self-invented currency based on his liens (van Dyke is the proud author of How to Create Currencies for Local Communities).
These examples just scratch the surface of van Dyke’s history of weird antics, but his tale of problematic run-ins with the legal system has become rather dark, so we’ll leave it be.
Moreover, van Dyke has appeared on Jeff Rense’s show with his conspiracy theories about Pearl Harbor (original here); his primary source was his father, who apparently claimed to have personally known about the attack in advance. He has also written Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars (excerpt here), which – as always – exposes the deepest secrets of the governments and is van Dyke’s own explanation for why he spends a lot of time in jail. It is not the court’s explanation. (Here is apparently his defense; John Nolan was his accomplice.) The book seems to have achieved some popularity in certain corners of the Internet (don’t go there).
Diagnosis: Colorful village original, sure, but his nuisance liens are actually a real, well, nuisance, and there are apparently people willing to listen to his advice on legal matters, which is worrisome.
