For 20 years, he has lived rent-free in a £1 million flat
Oxford graduate Faiz Siddiqui is taking his parents to court in a bid to force them to provide him with a lifelong maintenance grant.
The unemployed 41-year-old has claimed that he is completely dependent on his wealthy mother and father.
He has said that he is entitled to claim maintenance from them as a “vulnerable” grown-up child due to his health issues.
Mr Siddiqui argued that denying him the money would be in violation of his human rights.
The case comes three years after he tried to sue Oxford University over his failure to get a first-class degree. His £1 million compensation claim was rejected.
The Oxford graduate has worked for several law firms but has been unemployed since 2011.
For 20 years, he has lived rent-free in a £1 million flat that is owned by his father Javed and mother Rakshanda near Hyde Park.
They have also been providing their son with more than £400-a-week and help him with his bills.
They now want to reduce their funding after an argument with their son. The parents claimed he is “difficult, demanding and pertinacious”.
After his case was rejected in family court in 2020, it has now been sent to the Court of Appeal.
The family’s lawyer, Justin Warshaw QC, told The Sun:
“These long-suffering parents have their own view of what is suitable provision for their ”difficult, demanding and pertinacious’ son.”
The Oxford graduate had previously tried to sue his former university for “appallingly bad” teaching that cost him a first-class degree.
He claimed that “boring” tuition and staff being on extended sabbatical leave had meant he only received a 2:1 instead of the First he had hoped for.
Mr Siddiqui argued that it cost him a place on a law course at a leading US Ivy League university, such as Yale or Harvard.
He also said it denied him a high-flying legal career.
As a result, Mr Siddiqui had requested £1 million in compensation.
But in 2018, the claim was rejected and Mr Siddiqui was told by a High Court judge that the tuition he received at Brasenose College was of a “perfectly adequate standard”.
Mr Justice Foskett ruled that Mr Siddiqui’s “inadequate preparation” and “lack of academic discipline” towards his degree were the reasons he underperformed in his June 2000 exams.
He added that a “severe episode of hayfever” may have also contributed to Mr Siddiqui’s failure to get his desired grade.
Claims that Mr Siddiqui’s personal tutor had failed to alert exam authorities that he was suffering from “insomnia, depression and anxiety” when he sat a paper were also rejected.
Mr Justice Foskett had expressed “sympathy and understanding” for Mr Siddiqui’s intermittent bouts of severe depression.
However, he said there was no evidence he was suffering from mental health problems when he took his final exams.
Oxford University had admitted there were fewer teaching staff during the autumn term in 1999 but denied that teaching was “inadequate”.
After the trial, Mr Justice Foskett said:
“Whilst it cannot be said that some aspect of a person’s education – inadequately delivered – can never be the cause of that person’s failure to achieve some otherwise attainable objective, the hurdles in establishing a claim for compensation based upon that inadequate delivery are great and often insurmountable.
“In this case, I have not been satisfied that the delivery of one particular feature of the claimant’s undergraduate degree course was inadequate or, in any event, that it had the consequences claimed for it.
“That said, in the present climate, some 17 years on from the material events in this case, when students are incurring substantial debts to pursue their university education, the quality of the education delivered will undoubtedly come under even greater scrutiny than it did in the past.
“There may be some rare cases where some claim for compensation for the inadequacy of the tuition provided may succeed, but it is hardly the ideal way of achieving redress.”
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