[Historical, social and psychiatric aspects of the "querulous patient"]

Courts, administrative agencies and doctors are occasionally but stubbornly confronted with reproaches and viciously hostile attacks by habitual litigious grouchers and fault finders to whom court judgements or counsels are purposeful personal insults. Such querulous, opinionated persons are obstinate "bellyachers" who "stick to their guns" and imaginary legal positions to the extent of being a general nuisance. Many of them are unable to appreciate the difference between law and their entirely subjective (often perverted) sense of justice; they feel constantly wronged or even persecuted. Basing on semantics and history, the psychological, psychiatric and expert problems are exhaustively discussed, including the problems of causing public annoyance and of the risks inherent in litigious paranoia.