'Litigants who lose sometimes blame their lawyer' is a truth widely acknowledged in the legal sector. Writing in this week’s NLJ, Michael Bundock, barrister, dispute resolution, LexisNexis, looks specifically at the circumstances in which a negligence claim may be struck out as an abuse of process because it involves a collateral attack on the earlier judgment.
The courts will not allow attempts to relitigate issues already determined.
Bundock covers a recent case concerning a bitterly contested wills dispute, Christodoulides v CP Christou LLP and another, which raised several interesting points on collateral attacks. He writes: ‘A further issue in Christodoulides was the effect of the negligence claim on documents of public record… There was a strong public interest in the finality of a grant of probate that militates against it being challenged collaterally. The same point applied to the claim concerning the transfer of property.’
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