The High Court dismissed Christopher Maxwell’s professional negligence claim against solicitors, finding that he had allowed the proceedings to stall for more than two years without a good explanation. The court’s decision was based on delay, and it stressed that the negligence allegations remained allegations.
Mr Maxwell’s claim arose from a personal injuries case he had started over an alleged trip and fall in 2001. He claimed that Liam Lysaght had served him badly. A dispute also arose over whether four other solicitors had been instructed to act for him in a claim against Mr Lysaght.
The proceedings began on 3 October 2013. The defendants filed their defences in 2014 and 2015. The fifth defendant swore an affidavit in July 2015 saying that the entire copy file had been disclosed. The judgment said this answered Mr Maxwell’s contention that a lien over the original file held by Crowley Millar had contributed to later delay. The court said no good reason had been given for why inspection of the original was needed when the complete copy file had been disclosed.
The last letter from Mr Maxwell’s solicitor before the strike-out motion was received on 7 July 2016. The defendants brought that motion on 25 October 2018. Mr Maxwell’s side referred to efforts to obtain an expert report and to exploring the first defendant’s insurance position. The court found neither explanation excused the inactivity. It noted that the expert report was not obtained until 8 February 2017, despite the full copy file having been disclosed in 2015.
The court also considered the age of the underlying personal injuries claim. If the professional negligence proceedings continued, it said, it could be difficult to determine whether Mr Maxwell would have succeeded in the trip-and-fall claim or what damages he might have recovered had it been pursued properly. The fifth defendant had also sworn that the proceedings had affected the defendants’ professional indemnity insurance and premiums.
The court granted the order dismissing Mr Maxwell’s claim for want of prosecution on grounds of inordinate and inexcusable delay. It did not decide whether the solicitors had been negligent.