A man stuck with a hefty legal bill after a court battle he views as pointless has been left without a home after his final shelter was seized to cover costs.

“It’s like taking away my tent,” Marcus Williams said of the confiscation of his boat Island Therapy, said to be worth little owing to its poor condition.

Mr Williams said he became inadvertently embroiled in a feud with HSBC Bank over a property on Happy Valley Road in which he had been allowed to live.

The landlord had agreed to give him accommodation in return for his work renovating the property.

However, in 2013, the property’s owner was ordered to give over possession of the property for sale, to cover its mortgage.

“She ended up getting evicted and the bank came after me — I got a letter saying I had to get out, but I had put a lot of work and money into the place,” Mr Williams said.

Ordered out in May 2014, Mr Williams said he had no idea that his landlord had required permission from the bank to give him a lease.

“I never contested the eviction itself; I just needed a little more time,” he said.

“But they took me to the Supreme Court over it. They went to full-blown trial over an uncontested eviction, when the only thing I was looking for was a different date to leave the property.”

On August 29, 2014, the bank sought a court order granting exclusive possession of the property and requiring Mr Williams to leave the premises within two weeks.

Arguing that he had put significant time and money into refurbishing the premises under an agreement with the landlord, Mr Williams asked to be given until the end of January 2015.

Appearing before Puisne Judge Stephen Hellman, he told the court he had entered a three-year agreement with the landlord around March 2012.

In his judgment that November, Mr Justice Hellman expressed sympathy for Mr Williams’s situation, but found that the order giving the bank possession of the property was binding on him. He was given 28 days to leave.

The judge found that “albeit through no fault of his, Mr Williams occupies the property as a trespasser”. As the losing party in the case, he was ordered to pay the bank’s costs.

According to Mr Williams, he was left with a $9,700 bill.

The 28ft sailboat on which he was living, which he said was worth little owing to its run-down condition and damaged rudder, was seized in December by the provost marshall to cover the cost.

“The bottom line is that at the time this judgment happened, I clearly did not understand what was going on,” Mr Williams told The Royal Gazette.

“The boat is a project boat for anybody who purchased it; they would have to spend thousands fixing it up. It has no value.”

Claiming his health has deteriorated as a result, Mr Williams believes his boat was seized to pressure him into covering a bill while he debates appealing the judgment.

While the boat sits in Dockyard awaiting auction, Mr Williams even tried appealing to Government House for a pardon, but civil cases do not qualify.

“People say I ought to go after the woman who owned the property, but that’s the last thing I’d do; she has enough trouble having lost her house,” he said.

“I don’t have faith in the Government or the judiciary. I want to take them on over this, but I don’t know what to do next.”