Direct access barrister defeats claim for three quadrillion pounds


Henshaw: Claim wholly speculative and unrealistic

The High Court has struck out “abusive, wasteful and meritless litigation” targeted at a direct access barrister, her clerk and her insurer – where the damages claimed ran into 27 figures.

John Wyllie and two of his companies sought damages of £292,806,729,326,976,872,097,543,994.24 – a number called a quadrillion in the UK – or alternatively £377bn.

However, there was an admission from the barrister involved, Dr Sandradee (Sandy) Joseph, that she could have given better advice.

Mr Justice Henshaw said Mr Wyllie had also made a variety of threats to the professional standing of Dr Joseph, David Foreman and the Bar Mutual Indemnity Fund (BMIF), as well as Clyde & Co, the law firm representing them.

These included complaints to multiple regulators – including the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Bar Standards Board and Legal Ombudsman – potential contempt of court applications, and a complaint about the auditors of BMIF on the basis that the insurer had not made allowance in its accounts for his claim.

The court recorded that Mr Wyllie also intended to publish articles about Dr Joseph, a BMIF employee and Clyde & Co on the internet, “and has provided screenshots to show the articles are drafted and ready to publish”.

In 2017, Mr Wyllie started working with an insurance broker called Arc Finance Group, and had an arrangement where his company, Wyllie Financial Services (WFS), would receive 60% of the commission Arc received on insurance policies it arranged, subject to a proviso that Arc could claw back any commission that was clawed back by insurers.

Henshaw J recounted: “Mr Wyllie planned to take advantage of a feature of life insurance practice, by which life insurers can pay out large commissions to brokers on new life insurance policies before they have received much by way of actual commissions on those policies; on the basis that they can claw back those commissions if the policies are cancelled or lapse for non-payment of premiums.

“Mr Wyllie – apparently encouraged by Arc – intended to take out multiple, very large, life insurance policies on the employees of WFS and ASN [another company he owned] receive his share of the up-front commission on those policies, and use those commissions to fund the start-up and business of ASN.

“For a while this approach appeared to be working: 484 policies of insurance were placed with various insurers for 44 individuals – an average of 11 polices per individual. WFS received around £688,000 by way of commission share from Arc in respect of these policies.”

This failed to take account of the need to pay the premiums, the judge noted, and then, as insurers began to realise what had happened, they cancelled the policies and sought to claw back the commissions.

Arc was unable to repay the money and went into liquidation, with its directors declared bankrupt.

“Mistakes appear to have been made by Arc when submitting the applications to insurers for some or all of the policies,” the judge observed.

Mr Wyllie claimed that, if he had received the money he should have done, then he would have launched a news platform employing 6,000 people – whom he would have insured – in “195 countries, 44 dependency countries and 65,000 states, cities, towns, villages, hamlets, islands and streets, encompassing 3.2 billion residential and domestic addresses globally”.

His pre-action letter went on: “This platform would provide a voice for the voiceless and eradicate misinformation, disinformation, and teen suicides and self-harm by 90%. Additionally [this] would have led to eradicating global fraud by 90% and supporting law enforcement at local, regional, national, global, and helicopter levels.”

Mr Wyllie sought redress from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme – initially putting his losses at £2m but, the judge said, “the claim evolved into a contention that the lost commission and policy benefits amounted to billions of pounds”.

The FSCS rejected the claim and Mr Wyllie’s application for judicial review of the decision was rejected, and the Court of Appeal refused permission to appeal that.

He then commenced proceedings against Arc. His Honour Judge Pelling KC struck out the particulars of claim but gave the claimants a chance to produce particulars which made out a sustainable claim.

It was at this point that he instructed Dr Joseph to draft new particulars, but Mrs Justice Dias struck out the claim, finding the particulars still lacking.

Mr Wyllie brought the present action. The court heard that the defendants accepted that Dr Joseph “breached a contractual and common law duty of reasonable skill and care to the claimants in producing particulars of claim which did not set out a sustainable claim against Arc in any respect”.

They had offered to compensate the claimants for the costs order made against them in respect of the strike out application, on the basis that it could have been avoided if the barrister had advised there was no sustainable claim to be put forward on the information provided to her.

“The offer was not accepted and has subsequently been withdrawn, on the basis that subsequent correspondence and the present claim show that the claimants would never have abandoned the claim against Arc,” the judge said.

“The present claim is to the effect that, but for Dr Joseph’s breach, the claimants would have pursued Arc and succeeded in being awarded a 27-figure sum.”

Henshaw J struck out the particulars of claim here as well, noting that they did not explain what specific allegations Dr Joseph should have pleaded that would have amounted to a viable claim, and also failed to plead “any comprehensible case” against Mr Foreman or BMIF.

He refused to give the claimants a chance to reformulate the claim, describing it as seeking “to defy the laws of economic gravity. It would be wholly speculative and unrealistic”.

The claimants’ conduct of the litigation to date “is another factor weighing against allowing them a further chance to try to put their case in order”.

Henshaw J said: “The pre- and post-claim correspondence from Mr Wyllie has already included some 73 emails from him with well over 6,000 pages of attachments. There have already been hearings before Fordham J, HHJ Pelling KC and Dias J as well as appellate involvement.

“Mr Wyllie’s approach to the service of the present application was obstructive and wasteful. The defendants seem unlikely to be able to recover these costs in practice…

“The time has come for this abusive, wasteful and meritless litigation to end. I have no hesitation in concluding that the claim should be struck out in its entirety.”





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