Finnan: Played for Liverpool in 2005 Champions League final
The High Court has made an extended civil restraint order (ECRO) against a former Premier League footballer over his continued attempts to sue his former solicitors.
Mr Justice Adam Johnson said Steve Finnan was “an intelligent and determined person” who had shown “some creativity” in pursuing his case as a litigant in person.
He continued: “The overall picture suggests a degree of compulsion in pursuing points repeatedly, which goes beyond the norm, and which requires some intervention. That is so not only for the benefit of Charles Russell Speechlys (CRS), but is also in the public interest.”
Mr Finnan was an Irish international best known for his time at Liverpool, where he was part of the 2005 Champions League winning team.
In late 2023, Master McQuail struck out his £6m negligence claim against CRS over advice it gave him on a dispute with his brother, Sean over a property development business run by Sean.
This led to him losing a large amount of money but the master said Mr Finnan had failed to show how anything else the law firm could have done might have produced a better result.
On appeal a year later, Mr Justice Roth reached the same conclusion and in April 2025 the Court of Appeal refused permission to bring a second appeal.
Two months later, the Court of Appeal refused a further application to re-open the intended appeal, certifying it as totally without merit. The Supreme Court then refused a further application to appeal.
In the latest proceedings, said Johnson J, Mr Finnan “seeks to make essentially the same claim” against CRS.
The judge said that, although he had “some sympathy” with Mr Finnan’s overall position – “he has been left in a most unfortunate state as a result of his dealings with his brother and everything that has followed from those dealings” – the new claim should still be struck out.
He rejected the argument that the claim had not been the subject of any adjudication because the first version was struck out.
It was not correct to say the claim failed on “purely procedural grounds”, the judge explained. “Both the master, and more significantly Roth J, did not consider that Stephen had put forward a properly coherent case on causation and loss.”
It was now a Henderson v Henderson abuse for Mr Finnan “to seek to resurrect his claim by advancing in new proceedings a more developed case on causation which could and should have been raised in the earlier action”.
In any event, even if there was no relevant adjudication in the earlier proceedings such as to bring the principle in Henderson v Henderson into play, “the attempt by means of the new claim belatedly to rectify defects in the old one is still an abuse given the overall circumstances”.
Further, Johnson J went on, the claims were time-barred.
In acceding to CRS’s request for an ECRO, Johnson J said that although he did not consider the second claim to be totally without merit, a number of Mr Finnan’s previous applications had been found as such.
He also cited Mr Finnan’s failed effort to initiate contempt of court proceedings against the CRS lawyer who had signed the firm’s defence in the original action.
Mr Finnan told Johnson J that he was now “effectively at the end of the road with his various challenges” – barring an appeal against this decision, for which permission would be needed – and so an ECRO was not needed.
But the judge said this was “not an answer to the picture presented by the evidence, which is of an intelligent and determined person who is now fighting a rigorous rearguard action, and who has shown some creativity in pursuing it”.
He continued: “The overall picture suggests a degree of compulsion in pursuing points repeatedly, which goes beyond the norm, and which requires some intervention.
“That is so not only for the benefit of Charles Russell Speechlys, but is also in the public interest: the court has a responsibility to marshal its resources in a proper manner for the benefit of all Court users, and to that end is justified in imposing an additional restraint on some litigants where without it, they would take up a disproportionate amount of the court’s time…
“In the end, therefore, I have determined that Stephen should be made subject to an ECRO. I emphasise that this is not intended to prevent access to the courts, but only to require any further claim or application to be subject to a review at the outset, to determine whether it should be allowed to proceed.”
Photo: By Alii h at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1859014
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