The High Court has refused an application to strike out professional negligence proceedings brought by John Killeen against his former solicitors over the handling of an earlier lawsuit.
Killeen alleges that Peter Higgins, trading as Regan McEntee & Partners Solicitors, failed to progress earlier professional negligence proceedings with reasonable expedition. Those proceedings had begun in February 2006 and were ultimately dismissed for inordinate and inexcusable delay in November 2022.
The former solicitors argued that Killeen’s current claim was statute-barred because he had ended their retainer more than six years before issuing the negligence proceedings in September 2022. Killeen had written in March 2015 saying he intended to represent himself and asking to collect his file.
Mr Justice Garrett Simons held that the limitation issue was not sufficiently clear-cut to justify the exceptional step of striking out the case before trial.
The key question, the judge said, is when Killeen sustained a real and meaningfully measurable loss. There is a respectable argument that any loss arose when the earlier proceedings had accumulated sufficient delay that they could no longer survive an application to dismiss, rather than automatically when the solicitors’ retainer ended.
The court stressed that it was not deciding when the limitation period actually began. That question, along with Killeen’s separate reliance on alleged fraudulent concealment, remains open for the trial court.
Simons J also rejected the solicitors’ argument that Killeen’s case should fail because he had not produced an independent expert report. The allegation concerns litigation management and delay, an area in which the court does not necessarily require expert evidence.
Several procedural applications made by Killeen were also refused, including objections to the solicitors’ memorandum of appearance and strike-out motion, a request for a non-lawyer to address the court on his behalf and a motion concerning the firm’s later registration as a limited liability partnership.
The court provisionally proposed that each side bear its own costs.