A firm alleged to have provided negligent professional advice is appealing the refusal of its strike-out claim.

Williams & Co Solicitors provided advice about a potential investment in nine different property schemes between 2017 and 2019 and represented each claimant in their purchases. The claimants allege the advice was negligent and are suing the firm.

The divisional court found 134 claimants were permitted to bring their claims against the firm in a single claim form. The firm appealed this decision.

Roger Stewart KC, for the firm, said the appeal concerned ‘one word and a lot of confusion’. He added: ‘The word is the ordinary English word "claim" which the divisional court decided meant claim form, and the confusion arises out of the attempt by the court to apply the decision of the divisional court.

‘For present purposes, it cannot possibly be said that you have a single claim in circumstances where you have no common cause of action at all, no common issues for the claimants either in fact or law [and] at most a similarity between factual events.’

Stewart told the court the ‘ordinary and natural meaning of the word claim’ in the context of the CPR is a ‘demand or entitlement to a remedy or relief’.

Discussing rule 19.1 which provides 'any number of claimants or defendants may be joined as parties to a claim', Stewart said: ‘The term claim or claims…is used in…distinction to claim form and proceedings. In other words, this is not a case where CPR 19 uses any of them interchangeably. I say that it means entitlement to relief.’

Simon Johnson, for the claimants, said: ‘The word claim is not to be equated with cause of action and one can turn the pages of part 19 and come up with numerous examples and indeed in other parts of the rules. The meaning advanced by the appellant is incorrect.'

He told the court the ‘divisional court was right to say [the word claim] means proceedings not a cause of action’.

Johnson said the firm gave ‘the wrong interpretation of the word claim’ that ‘it refers to joining a cause of action arising out of a common event or series of linked events’ which is ‘plainly not in the wording of the rule’. He added: ‘The procedural consequences of what the appellant urges upon you are highly undesirable; the issue of numerous claim forms in many cases, not just this one, at vast expense to the litigants for no real procedural benefit.

‘It is important to bear in mind the overriding objective and also the purpose for which the power to make the CPR is to be exercised, which is to achieve accessible fairness and efficiency [and] to ensure the rules are both simple and simply expressed. We say the appellant’s construction does not achieve that while the divisional court’s construction does.’

Judgment was reserved.