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     Talbot v. Berkshire County Council [1994] Q.B. 290 arose out of a motor accident in which both the driver and his passenger were severely injured. The passenger sued the driver. The driver's insurers, without notice to the driver, made a third party claim against the Berkshire County Council, claiming contribution as between joint tortfeasors but including no claim for the driver's own injuries. Not until after the expiry of the limitation period for bringing a personal claim did the driver learn of the third party claim against the county council. At trial, the passenger succeeded in full, damages being apportioned between the driver and the county council. The driver then sued the county council to recover damages for his own injuries. On the trial of preliminary issues, the judge held that the driver was prima facie estopped from bringing the action but that there were special circumstances which enabled the court to permit the action to be pursued. The county council successfully challenged that conclusion on appeal. At page 298 Stuart-Smith L.J. said:

"There can be no doubt that the [driver's] personal injury claim could have been brought at the time of [the passenger's] action. It could have been included in the original third party notice issued against the council (R.S.C., Ord. 16, r. 1(b)(c)); it could have been started by a separate writ and consolidated with or ordered to be tried with [the passenger's] action: Ord. 4, r. 9. The third party proceedings could have been amended at any time before trial and perhaps even during the trial to include such a claim, notwithstanding that it was statute-barred, since it arose out of the same or substantially the same facts as the cause of action in respect of which relief was already claimed, namely, contribution or indemnity in respect of [the passenger's] claim: Ord. 20, r. 5. In my opinion, if it was to be pursued, it should have been so brought."

    Stuart-Smith L.J. considered that the insurers' solicitors appeared to have been negligent but that the claim against the county council should be struck out unless there were special circumstances, and concluded that there were not. With his conclusions Mann and Nourse L.JJ. agreed. Since the driver's claim against the county council was held by the judge to be statute-barred, a claim against the solicitors may have offered the driver his only hope of recovery.

    The plaintiff in C (A Minor) v. Hackney London Borough Council [1996] 1 W.L.R. 789 lived in the house of which her mother was tenant. She suffered from Down's Syndrome and claimed in this action to have suffered personal injury caused by the negligence and breach of statutory duty of the borough council as housing authority. Her mother had previously made a similar claim which had been the subject of a consent order in the county court. The borough council applied to set aside a judgment entered in the plaintiff's favour in default of defence and to strike out the claim on the ground that the plaintiff's action was an abuse of the process of the court. Reliance was placed in particular on the Yat Tung case and Talbot v. Berkshire County Council. This argument was accepted by the judge, who held that the plaintiff's action should have been advanced at the same time as her mother's, the more so as the plaintiff was dependent on her mother. The plaintiff's appeal against this decision succeeded. Simon Brown L.J. said, at page 794:

"I therefore reject entirely the submission that Yat Tung Investment Co. Ltd. v. Dao Heng Bank Ltd. [1975] A.C. 581 justifies extending the Talbot v. Berkshire County Council [1994] Q.B. 290 principle - that an unlitigated monetary claim is barred if it could have been advanced and established in earlier proceedings (itself to my mind an extended application of the res judicata doctrine) - to those not themselves party to the earlier proceedings.

"It follows from all this that in my judgment the doctrine of res judicata even in its widest sense has simply no application to the circumstances of the present case and that the judge erred in ruling to the contrary. One does not, therefore, reach the point of asking here whether special circumstances exist to exclude it; C's erstwhile solicitors' suggested negligence is, frankly, an irrelevance. Nor, in my judgment, does this case come within measurable distance of any other form of abuse of process based on public policy considerations analogous to those underlying the res judicata doctrine: see, for instance, the Court of Appeal's decision in Ashmore v. British Coal Corporation [1990] 2 Q.B. 338.

"All that said, this judgment should not be taken as any encouragement to lawyers or their clients to follow the course in fact adopted here. As the judge rightly recognised, in circumstances such as these, it is plainly in the public interest to have a single action in which the claims of all the affected members of the household are included rather than a multiplicity of actions . . ."

    Barrow v. Bankside Agency Ltd. [1996] 1 W.L.R. 257 was one of the flood of cases which arose out of losses in the Lloyd's insurance market. Mr. Barrow was a member of an action group which had successfully sued a number of members' agents for negligent underwriting. Having substantially succeeded, but recovered only a proportion of the damages he had claimed, Mr. Barrow issued fresh proceedings against his members' agent on a different ground. It was clear that this claim, even if made earlier, would not have been tried at the same time as the earlier action, since the scheduling of cases was the subject of detailed management by the Commercial Court. The members' agent contended that to bring this further claim, not raised at the time of the earlier proceedings, was an abuse. In the Court of Appeal it was said, at page 260:

"The rule in Henderson v. Henderson (1843) 3 Hare 100 is very well known. It requires the parties, when a matter becomes the subject of litigation between them in a court of competent jurisdiction, to bring their whole case before the court so that all aspects of it may be finally decided (subject, of course, to any appeal) once and for all. In the absence of special circumstances, the parties cannot return to the court to advance arguments, claims or defences which they could have put forward for decision on the first occasion but failed to raise. The rule is not based on the doctrine of res judicata in a narrow sense, nor even on any strict doctrine of issue or cause of action estoppel. It is a rule of public policy based on the desirability, in the general interest as well as that of the parties themselves, that litigation should not drag on for ever and that a defendant should not be oppressed by successive suits when one would do. That is the abuse at which the rule is directed."

At page 263, the rule was described as a salutary one, and the court suggested that its application should not be circumscribed by unnecessarily restrictive rules. On the facts it was held that the procedure adopted by Mr. Barrow was not an abuse. The court also held that if, contrary to its opinion, the case did fall within the mischief at which Henderson v. Henderson was directed, there were special circumstances which justified non-application of the rule.

    In Manson v. Vooght and others [1999] BPIR 376, the plaintiff had sued administrative receivers of a company of which he had been managing director and principal shareholder in a 1990 action which culminated in a judgment adverse to him in 1993. There were other proceedings leading to other judgments, also given in 1993, relating to certain of the same issues: proceedings to disqualify the plaintiff as a director, in which findings adverse to him were made; and summonses issued in the liquidation of the company, when the court refused to allow issues which had been decided in the disqualification proceedings to be re-litigated. In 1994 the plaintiff issued a further writ making claims against the administrative receivers and others. His proceedings against the administrative receivers were struck out on the ground that these claims should have been raised, if at all, in the 1990 action. This decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal. Giving the leading judgment May L.J. said, at page 387:

"In my view, the use in this context of the phrase 'res judicata' is perhaps unhelpful, and this not only because it is Latin. We are not concerned with cases where a court has decided the matter; but rather cases where the court has not decided the matter, but where in a (usually late) succeeding action someone wants to bring a claim which should have been brought, if at all, in earlier concluded proceedings. If in all the circumstances the bringing of the claim in the succeeding action is an abuse, the court will strike it out unless there are special circumstances. To find that there are special circumstances may, for practical purposes, be the same thing as deciding that there is no abuse, as Sir Thomas Bingham M.R. came close to holding on the facts in Barrow. The bringing of a claim which could have been brought in earlier proceedings may not be an abuse. It may in particular cases be sensible to advance cases separately. It depends on all the circumstances of each case. Once the court's consideration is directed clearly towards the question of abuse, it will be seen that the passage from Sir James Wigram V.-C.'s judgment in Henderson is a full modern statement of the law so long as it is not picked over semantically as if it were a tax statute.

"The extent of any coincidence of causes of action, facts or even the capacities in which parties are sued, though relevant, will not necessarily determine the outcome . . ."

At page 388, May L.J. continued:

"[Counsel for Mr. Manson] submits that the kind of abuse of process relied on by the first defendant in this appeal is to be narrowly confined and precisely defined so that legitimate claims are not stifled and so that potential litigants know where they stand. Otherwise they may be driven to include in one proceedings related but distinct claims which might sensibly be left for later consideration. The law should not thus encourage premature litigation which may prove unnecessary. He further submits that delay is the subject of the law of limitation and should not feature additionally as an element of abuse.

"It is of course axiomatic that the court will only strike out a claim as an abuse after most careful consideration. But the court has to balance a plaintiff's right to bring before the court genuine and legitimate claims with a defendant's right to be protected from being harassed by multiple proceedings where one should have sufficed. Abuse of process is a concept which defies precise definition in the abstract. In particular cases, the court has to decide whether there is abuse sufficiently serious to justify preventing the offending litigant from proceeding. In cases such as the present, the abuse is sufficiently defined in Henderson which itself is encapsulated in the proposition that the litigant could and should have raised the matter in question in earlier concluded proceedings. Special circumstances may negative or excuse what would otherwise be an abuse. But there may in particular cases be elements of abuse additional to the mere fact that the matter could and should have been raised in the earlier proceedings."

On page 389 May L.J. added:

"Mr Manson relies on special circumstances to negative or excuse the abuse. He says that the scope of the 1990 action was limited because he had legal expenses insurance for that action which only covered some of his claims and that the insurers were not prepared to support the claims which he now wants to bring. Although this may be an explanation, in my view it does not excuse the abuse nor does it amount to special circumstances. It is commonplace for litigants to have difficulties in affording the cost of litigation. But lack of means cannot stand as an excuse for abuse of process."

    Last in this series of cases comes Bradford & Bingley Building Society v. Seddon [1999] 1 W.L.R. 1482, a decision later in time than the Court of Appeal's judgment in the present case but given by two of the same Lords Justices. Mr. Seddon had made an investment on the advice of an accountant, Mr. Hancock, which he had financed by taking a mortgage loan from the Bradford & Bingley Building Society. The investment failed. Mr. Seddon claimed damages or an indemnity against Mr. Hancock, who admitted liability to indemnify Mr. Seddon to the extent of about 75 per cent. of Mr. Seddon's claim. Judgment was entered in Mr. Seddon's favour for this admitted sum and Mr. Hancock was given leave to defend as to the balance. Mr. Seddon was unable to enforce his judgment as Mr. Hancock had no money, and the residual claim was not pursued. The building society then proceeded against Mr. Seddon to enforce the debt owed to it under the mortgage loan. Mr. Seddon sought to join as third parties Mr. Hancock, in order to pursue the residual claim, and two of his partners, Mr. Seddon's contention being that the advice tended to him had been given by the firm to which Mr. Hancock and his partners belonged. An application to strike out the third party claim was upheld by the judge and Mr. Seddon appealed. In the course of a judgment with which Nourse and Ward L.JJ. agreed, Auld L.J. said at page 1490:

"In my judgment, it is important to distinguish clearly between res judicata and abuse of process not qualifying as res judicata, a distinction delayed by the blurring of the two in the courts' subsequent application of the above dictum [of Sir James Wigram V.-C. in Henderson v. Henderson]. The former, in its cause of action estoppel form, is an absolute bar to relitigation, and in its issue estoppel form also, save in 'special cases' or 'special circumstances': see Thoday v. Thoday [1964] P. 181, 197-198 per Diplock L.J. and Arnold v. National Westminster Bank Plc [1991] 2 A.C. 93. The latter, which may arise where there is no cause of action or issue estoppel, is not subject to the same test, the task of the court being to draw the balance between the competing claims of one party to put his case before the court and of the other not to be unjustly hounded given the earlier history of the matter . . .

"Thus, abuse of process may arise where there has been no earlier decision capable of amounting to res judicata (either or both because the parties or the issues are different) for example, where liability between new parties and/or determination of new issues should have been resolved in the earlier proceedings. It may also arise where there is such an inconsistency between the two that it would be unjust to permit the later one to continue . . ."

At page 1492 Auld L.J. continued:

"In my judgment mere re-litigation, in circumstances not giving rise to cause of action or issue estoppel, does not necessarily give rise to abuse of process. Equally, the maintenance of a second claim which could have been part of an earlier one, or which conflicts with an earlier one, should not, per se, be regarded as an abuse of process. Rules of such rigidity would be to deny its very concept and purpose. As Kerr L.J. and Sir David Cairns emphasised in Bragg v. Oceanus Mutual Underwriting Association (Bermuda) Ltd. [1982] 2 Lloyd's Rep. 132, 137, 138-139 respectively, the courts should not attempt to define or categorise fully what may amount to an abuse of process; see also per Stuart-Smith L.J. in Ashmore v. British Coal Corporation [1992] Q.B. 338, 352. Sir Thomas Bingham M.R. underlined this in Barrow v. Bankside Agency Ltd. [1996] 1 W.L.R. 257, stating, at page 263B, that the doctrine should not be circumscribed by unnecessarily restrictive rules" since its purpose was the prevention of abuse and it should not endanger the maintenance of genuine claims; see also per Saville L.J. at page 266D-E.

"Some additional element is required, such as a collateral attack on a previous decision (see e.g. Hunter v. Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police [1982] A.C. 529; Bragg's case [1982] 2 Lloyd's Rep. 132, per Kerr L.J. and Sir David Cairns, at pp. 137 and 139 respectively, and Ashmore's case [1990] 2 Q.B. 338), some dishonesty (see e.g. per Stephenson L.J. in Bragg's case, at p. 139, and Potter L.J. in Morris v. Wentworth-Stanley [1999] 2 W.L.R. 470, 480 and 481; or successive actions amounting to unjust harassment (see e.g. Manson v. Vooght . . .))."

The Court of Appeal held that Mr. Seddon's third-party proceedings were not an abuse of process, and the appeal succeeded.

    It may very well be, as has been convincingly argued (Watt, "The Danger and Deceit of the Rule in Henderson v. Henderson: A new approach to successive civil actions arising from the same factual matter," 19 Civil Justice Quarterly, (July 2000), page 287), that what is now taken to be the rule in Henderson v. Henderson, has diverged from the ruling which Wigram V.-C. made, which was addressed to res judicata. But Henderson v. Henderson abuse of process, as now understood, although separate and distinct from cause of action estoppel and issue estoppel, has much in common with them. The underlying public interest is the same: that there should be finality in litigation and that a party should not be twice vexed in the same matter. This public interest is reinforced by the current emphasis on efficiency and economy in the conduct of litigation, in the interests of the parties and the public as a whole. The bringing of a claim or the raising of a defence in later proceedings may, without more, amount to abuse if the court is satisfied (the onus being on the party alleging abuse) that the claim or defence should have been raised in the earlier proceedings if it was to be raised at all. I would not accept that it is necessary, before abuse may be found, to identify any additional element such as a collateral attack on a previous decision or some dishonesty, but where those elements are present the later proceedings will be much more obviously abusive, and there will rarely be a finding of abuse unless the later proceeding involves what the court regards as unjust harassment of a party. It is, however, wrong to hold that because a matter could have been raised in early proceedings it should have been, so as to render the raising of it in later proceedings necessarily abusive. That is to adopt too dogmatic an approach to what should in my opinion be a broad, merits-based judgment which takes account of the public and private interests involved and also takes account of all the facts of the case, focusing attention on the crucial question whether, in all the circumstances, a party is misusing or abusing the process of the court by seeking to raise before it the issue which could have been raised before. As one cannot comprehensively list all possible forms of abuse, so one cannot formulate any hard and fast rule to determine whether, on given facts, abuse is to be found or not. Thus while I would accept that lack of funds would not ordinarily excuse a failure to raise in earlier proceedings an issue which could and should have been raised then, I would not regard it as necessarily irrelevant, particularly if it appears that the lack of funds has been caused by the party against whom it is sought to claim. While the result may often be the same, it is in my view preferable to ask whether in all the circumstances a party's conduct is an abuse than to ask whether the conduct is an abuse and then, if it is, to ask whether the abuse is excused or justified by special circumstances. Properly applied, and whatever the legitimacy of its descent, the rule has in my view a valuable part to play in protecting the interests of justice.

    Mr. ter Haar, for Mr. Johnson, submitted (as the judge had held) that GW was estopped by convention from contending that the bringing of an action to enforce his personal claims was an abuse of process. In resisting GW's complaint of abuse, Mr. ter Haar relied, as he did in the courts below, on three features of this case in particular. The first was the acute financial predicament in which Mr. Johnson personally and WWH found themselves as a result, as Mr. Johnson alleges, of GW's negligence. The burden of financing the continuing operation of WWH, and of its very expensive litigation against GW, fell on him. His means was stretched to the utmost. The only hope of financial salvation lay in an early and favourable outcome to the company's claim against GW. Mr. Johnson did not have a full legal aid certificate to pursue a personal claim. In any event, the addition of a personal claim would have complicated and delayed the trial of the company's claim, which might well have jeopardised the company's survival. Secondly, Mr. ter Haar relied on the conduct of the parties after the settlement agreement was made (if, contrary to his earlier submission, there was no estoppel by convention). He pointed out that four-and-a-half years elapsed from the issue of Mr. Johnson's writ in this action before GW first intimated their intention to apply to strike out the proceedings as an abuse of the court's process, during which period pleadings and evidence were exchanged, considerable costs were incurred, a substantial payment into court was made and a trial date fixed. This procedural history, he submitted, was evidence of the expectation of the parties at the time when the company's action was settled, and was in itself ground for rejecting GW's application; Halliday v. Shoesmith [1993] 1 W.L.R. 1 at 5. Thirdly, Mr. ter Haar submitted that, to the extent that issues litigated in the company's action were to be re-litigated in this action, it was because GW had insisted on this and rejected the invitation of Mr. Johnson to treat the evidence given in the earlier action as if given in this action.

    Two subsidiary arguments were advanced by Mr. ter Haar in the courts below and rejected by each. The first was that the rule in Henderson v. Henderson did not apply to Mr. Johnson since he had not been the plaintiff in the first action against GW. In my judgment this argument was rightly rejected. A formulaic approach to application of the rule would be mistaken. WWH was the corporate embodiment of Mr. Johnson. He made decisions and gave instructions on its behalf. If he had wished to include his personal claim in the company's action, or to issue proceedings in tandem with those of the company, he had power to do so. The correct approach is that formulated by Sir Robert Megarry V.-C. in Gleeson v. J. Wippell & Co. Ltd. [1977] 1 W.L.R. 510 at 515 where he said:

"Second, it seems to me that the substratum of the doctrine is that a man ought not to be allowed to litigate a second time what has already been decided between himself and the other party to the litigation. This is in the interest both of the successful party and of the public. But I cannot see that this provides any basis for a successful defendant to say that the successful defence is a bar to the plaintiff suing some third party, or for that third party to say that the successful defence prevents the plaintiff from suing him, unless there is a sufficient degree of identity between the successful defendant and the third party. I do not say that one must be the alter ego of the other: but it does seem to me that, having due regard to the subject matter of the dispute, there must be a sufficient degree of identification between the two to make it just to hold that the decision to which one was party should be binding in proceedings to which the other is party. It is in that sense that I would regard the phrase 'privity of interest . . . .'"

On the present facts that test was clearly satisfied.

The second subsidiary argument was that the rule in Henderson v. Henderson did not apply to Mr. Johnson since the first action against GW had culminated in a compromise and not a judgment. This argument also was rightly rejected. An important purpose of the rule is to protect a defendant against the harassment necessarily involved in repeated actions concerning the same subject matter. A second action is not the less harassing because the defendant has been driven or thought it prudent to settle the first; often, indeed, that outcome would make a second action the more harassing.

    On the estoppel by convention issue, Mr. Steinfeld Q.C. for GW submitted that the Court of Appeal had been right and the judge wrong. There had been no common understanding between the parties on the issue of abuse, a topic which had never been raised. There was nothing to suggest that GW had tacitly agreed to forgo any defence properly open to it. Mr. Steinfeld further submitted that the present proceedings did amount to an abuse, as the Court of Appeal had rightly held. Mr. Johnson could have advanced his personal claim at the same time as the company's claim and therefore should have done so. The consequence of his not doing so was to expose GW to the harassment of further proceedings canvassing many of the same issues as had been canvassed in the earlier action, with consequential waste of time and money and detriment to other court users. The facts relied on to excuse his earlier inaction were not accepted. He should have sought a full legal aid certificate earlier. He could not rely on lack of means. Any loss caused to Mr. Johnson by GW's delay in applying to strike out could be compensated in costs.

    Neither party challenged the correctness in principle of Lord Denning M.R.'s statement in the Amalgamated Investment case, above, at page 122 which, despite its familiarity, I quote:

"The doctrine of estoppel is one of the most flexible and useful in the armoury of the law. But it has become overloaded with cases. That is why I have not gone through them all in this judgment. It has evolved during the last 150 years in a sequence of separate developments: proprietary estoppel, estoppel by representation of fact, estoppel by acquiescence, and promissory estoppel. At the same time it has been sought to be limited by a series of maxims: estoppel is only a rule of evidence, estoppel cannot give rise to a cause of action, estoppel cannot do away with the need for consideration, and so forth. All these can now be seen to merge into one general principle shorn of limitations. When the parties to a transaction proceed on the basis of an underlying assumption - either of fact or of law - whether due to misrepresentation or mistake makes no difference - on which they have conducted the dealings between them - neither of them will be allowed to go back on that assumption when it would be unfair or unjust to allow him to do so. If one of them does seek to go back on it, the courts will give the other such remedy as the equity of the case demands."

The question is whether the parties to the settlement of WWH's action (relevantly, Mr. Johnson and GW) proceeded on the basis of an underlying assumption that a further proceeding by Mr. Johnson would not be an abuse of process and whether, if they did, it would be unfair or unjust to allow GW to go back on that assumption. In my judgment both these conditions were met on the present facts. Mr. Johnson was willing in principle to try to negotiate an overall settlement of his and the company's claims but this was not possible in the time available and it was GW's solicitor who said that the personal claim "would be a separate claim and it would really be a matter for separate negotiation in due course." It is noteworthy that Mr. Johnson personally was party to the settlement agreement, and that the agreement contained terms designed to preclude (in one instance) and limit (in another) personal claims by him. Those provisions only made sense on the assumption that Mr. Johnson was likely to make a personal claim. GW did not, of course, agree to forgo any defence the firm might have to Mr. Johnson's claim if brought, and the documents show that GW's solicitor was alert to issues of remoteness and duplication. Had Mr. Johnson delayed unduly before proceeding, a limitation defence would have become available. But an application to strike out for abuse of process is not a defence, it is an objection to an action being brought at all. The terms of the settlement agreement and the exchanges which preceded it in my view point strongly towards acceptance by both parties that it was open to Mr. Johnson to issue proceedings to enforce a personal claim, which could then be tried or settled on its merits, and I consider that it would be unjust to permit GW to resile from that assumption.