A judge has thrown out claims of professional negligence against lawyers from a litigant in person who had engaged in court proceedings for more than a decade.
Rupert St John Webster, representing himself after an application to adjourn the hearing was rejected, had alleged that John Penley and south west firm Winterbotham Smith Penley LLP were negligent in the handling of his grandparents’ affairs going back to the 1990s.
Webster has been engaged in related litigation for more than 10 years and has been subjected to extended civil restraint orders to prevent him bringing proceedings.
In Webster v Penley & Anor, His Honour Judge Paul Matthews ruled that the claim should fail and said that the claimant’s ‘obsession’ showed he was in no position to correct any defects in his case. The judge added: ‘I see no sufficient reason to leave this serious professional negligence claim hanging any longer over the heads of the defendants.’
Webster alleged that the defendants caused loss and damage to his late grandfather’s estate through faulty estate planning advice in 1992 and failing to claim agricultural property relief from inheritance tax. The failures were said by Webster to amount to fraud. Further allegations related to litigation led by the defendants which he alleged caused loss and damage to the family.
The defendants denied relevant elements of the claims, including negligence, causation and the losses claimed. It was submitted that proceedings were an abuse of the court process and a collateral attack on a number of previous judgments.
The judge gave summary judgment for the defendants or struck out claims on the basis that a cause of action was not stated, the alleged acts took place too long ago, and the court was being asked to re-run arguments already rejected.
He declined to give the claimant an opportunity to amend his case to allow him to plead proper causes of action. The judge added that, despite years of litigation at great personal expense, and a number of civil restraint orders made against him, the claimant ‘simply cannot process his lack of success as due to a lack of merits’.
As a postscript, the judge noted that after he circulated a draft judgment for corrections, the 55-page document came back from Webster as 69 pages.
‘I am afraid that the courts cannot operate on the basis that parties are free to contribute whatever arguments they like whenever they like,’ added the judge. ‘Nor should the opportunity to suggest the correction of spelling and other minor errors be treated as an opportunity to re-argue the case.’
