Morris v Knights Professional Services Limited & Ors [2026] EWHC 524 (Ch)

March 22, 2026

Refusal of relief from sanctions: Morris v Knights Professional Services Limited & Ors [2026] EWHC 524 (Ch)

Introduction

In Morris v Knights Professional Services Limited & Ors [2026] EWHC 524 (Ch), HH Judge Davis-White KC, sitting as a Judge of the Chancery Division, held that the claimant had failed to comply with the disclosure obligation in paragraph 7 of the order made on 8 April 2025. By reason of the unless provision in paragraph 5 of that order, the claim therefore stood struck out unless relief from sanctions was granted. Applying the familiar Denton approach, the court refused relief.

The decision is a clear reminder that compliance with search based disclosure obligations is not achieved by approximate or partial performance. The adequacy of the search methodology, the content of the disclosure certificate, the form of the list of documents, the production of electronic material in native format, and the timely disclosure of relevant documents all matter.

The decision is also important for its treatment of CPR 3.10. The claimant sought to characterise the defects as technical or procedural errors capable of validation. The judge was inclined to accept that the concept of an error of procedure may be wide, but did not decide the point. Instead, he held that CPR 3.10 had only limited relevance on the facts of this case. Once the court had made an unless order specifying the consequence of non-compliance, the real question was whether relief from sanctions should be granted. It was not enough to relabel substantive defaults in disclosure as curable procedural irregularities.

Factual background

The proceedings were a professional negligence claim brought against a former firm of solicitors, successor entities, and counsel. The underlying dispute concerned a share sale agreement dated 9 November 2006 under which the claimant, Philip Morris, and his business partner, Christine Smith, sold their shares in Glenpath Holdings Limited to Swanton Care & Community Ltd. The company operated a care home business. The agreement provided for an initial consideration of just over £16 million and an earn-out mechanism under which the claimant alone might receive further payments linked to future consultancy services and additional placements achieved at new properties.

The claimant received earn-out payments of just over £4 million during the initial four year period. Towards the end of that period he sought an extension. That was refused, and he then brought proceedings against the buyer. Those proceedings failed. HH Judge Bird held that, while the claimant had an enforceable right to provide consultancy services during the initial four year period, the supposed right to continue for such further period as might reasonably be agreed was in substance an unenforceable agreement to agree. The appeal was dismissed in 2018.

The present proceedings were then brought as a professional negligence claim. In broad terms, the claimant alleged that the first defendant had negligently drafted the share sale agreement so that the extension mechanism was unenforceable. He further alleged that the second and third defendants had acted negligently in relation to the later litigation, including in relation to conflict, limitation, prospects, settlement, costs exposure and after-the-event insurance. The fourth defendant, counsel in the original litigation, was alleged to have failed to advise on the unenforceability point and to have given inappropriately robust advice on the merits.

The claim already had a difficult procedural history. In 2022 HH Judge Kramer found, on balance, that the proceedings had been issued and pursued in a manner amounting to warehousing and therefore an abuse of process, although he declined at that stage to strike out the claim and considered that strict case management and peremptory orders ought to be sufficient going forward. That said, the present judgment also records Arnold LJ’s later observation that it was arguable HH Judge Kramer had erred in concluding that the claimant was guilty of abuse of process, and that the true position may instead have been one of incompetence on the part of the claimant’s solicitor. Even with that qualification, the earlier procedural history plainly formed part of the context in which the later disclosure order was made.

The April 2025 order

At the costs and case management conference on 8 April 2025, the claim was treated as a Less Complex Claim for the purposes of PD57AD. The claimant alone was ordered to give search based Extended Disclosure in Model D in accordance with the approved Disclosure Review Document and to take the required steps by 4 pm on 3 June 2025. The order also contained an unless provision. Unless the claimant complied with paragraph 7 of the order relating to disclosure, among other obligations, the claim was to be immediately and automatically struck out. The court had also made directions down to a ten day trial within a trial window from 4 May 2026 to 4 October 2026, and the trial was subsequently listed to commence on 11 May 2026.

The wording and context of that order mattered. The judge later emphasised that this was not a first default in an otherwise orderly piece of litigation. The unless order had been made against a background of delay, lackadaisical compliance and concern about whether the case could be kept on course for trial. That context informed both the construction of the order and the seriousness of later breaches.

The issues before the court

The immediate applications before the court were the claimant’s application for an extension of time for witness statements and, later, an application for relief from sanctions if the court concluded that there had been non-compliance with the disclosure order. Those applications raised three central questions. First, had the claimant complied with the April 2025 order requiring Model D extended disclosure in accordance with the approved Disclosure Review Document and PD57AD. Secondly, if there had not been compliance, could the defects nonetheless be treated as procedural irregularities capable of validation under CPR 3.10. Thirdly, if the automatic sanction had taken effect, should the court grant relief from sanctions under Denton v TH White Ltd [2014] 1 WLR 3926.

Those issues arose because, after the claimant purported to give disclosure on 3 June 2025, the defendants wrote on 18 June 2025 identifying substantial concerns. They complained of obvious gaps in disclosure, the absence of proper information about the searches undertaken, and a defective list of documents. No prompt substantive response followed. After repeated assurances, some form of substantive reply only arrived on 27 October 2025, more than four months later and only days before the first hearing. By then further documents were being disclosed, the defendants were also taking the point that electronic documents had been produced as a single PDF rather than in native format, and the application for relief from sanctions itself was only issued at the end of October 2025.

The court’s reasoning

The judge began with the April order itself. Paragraph 5 was clear. Unless the claimant complied with paragraph 7, which required the Model D disclosure exercise to be completed by the specified deadline, the claim stood automatically struck out. Referring to Midland Premier Properties Ltd v Doal [2026] EWCA Civ 117, the judge observed that unless orders must be construed carefully, but the essential question remained whether the order, properly interpreted, had been complied with. On the facts here, the relevant question was straightforward: had the claimant complied with paragraph 7 of the order.

The claimant relied heavily on CPR 3.10, contending that any failings were merely technical or procedural. The judge was inclined to the view that the concept of an error of procedure may be wide, but he expressly did not decide the point. He held instead that CPR 3.10 had only limited relevance on the facts of this case. The court had already made an unless order under CPR 3.1(3) specifying the consequence of breach. In those circumstances, if the claimant had failed to comply, the issue was whether relief from sanctions should be granted. There was no separate route by which the court could sidestep the sanction already imposed by the order by treating the defaults as procedural errors and validating them under CPR 3.10. The judge treated Walsham Chalet Park Ltd v Tallington Lakes Ltd [2014] EWCA Civ 1607 as supporting that approach by analogy.

The first major defect identified by the court concerned the disclosure certificate. In a search based Model D exercise, the certificate had to state the limits of the search by reference to custodians, date ranges, locations, document types, keyword searches and any other relevant limits, unless those matters had already been properly particularised elsewhere. The certificate served by the claimant simply referred the reader to the Disclosure Review Document. That did not suffice. In this less complex case, the DRD did not itself contain the necessary detail. Nor did the certificate explain what search limits had been adopted without agreement and why. The judge held that disclosure of the extent of the searches was a key part of a Model D exercise and that the omission meant the certificate was not substantially in the prescribed form.

The extended disclosure list of documents was also defective. The practice direction required a chronological list, or classes of documents in chronological order, identifying each document with a clear description including the date and, where applicable, the author, sender or recipient. The list provided did not meet that standard. Significant numbers of documents lacked dates, and a significant number of descriptions were inaccurate if not misleading. The judge rejected the suggestion that the true position could be worked out by careful inspection of the documents themselves. That, he said, missed the point of having a compliant list in the first place. In any event, some information, including dates in certain instances, could only be derived from metadata which had not initially been provided.

The court also held that the claimant had failed properly to produce electronic documents. Paragraph 13.1 of PD57AD required disclosable electronic documents to be produced in native format in a manner preserving metadata, unless otherwise agreed or ordered. Instead, what had been provided in June 2025 was a single PDF. The judge rejected the submission that the practice direction was unclear on the point. He held that the requirement was clear and that the June production was defective. The attempted correction, by providing what were said to be native files only on the first morning of the resumed hearing in January 2026, came far too late to permit any proper review by the defendants.

There had also been late disclosure of documents that were plainly relevant to the agreed issues for disclosure. One example was the Bates Weston engagement letter. Bates Weston had acted as selling agent. The late disclosed engagement letter stated that Bates Weston would assist and advise on the proposed disposal, including negotiation of price, terms and conditions and advising on the sale and purchase agreement. It also referred, at least on one reading, to tax advisory work. The judge held that the document was clearly relevant to the agreed issues concerning advice received from other professionals and tax advice, and should have been disclosed on time.

Further examples concerned costs and quantification. In October 2025 and January 2026 there was late disclosure of counsel’s fee notes and a bank statement relating to payment of litigation costs. The judge held that these documents were obviously relevant to the disclosure issue dealing with the claimant’s alleged costs losses. An important feature of the reasoning was the judge’s insistence that disclosure concerns documents, not merely the information a party believes can be extracted from them. It was no answer to say that one fee note need not be disclosed because another later note summarised the position, or that an engagement letter was irrelevant because it was not itself written advice. The question was whether the documents themselves were relevant to the agreed issues for disclosure. On that footing, they plainly were.

The judge therefore concluded that the April 2025 order had not been complied with by 3 June 2025. That was sufficient to engage the automatic sanction in the unless order, subject only to the claimant obtaining relief from sanctions.

Relief from sanctions

Applying Denton, the judge held at the first stage that the breaches were both serious and significant, individually and collectively. The failure properly to disclose the scope and limits of the searches was serious because it went to the integrity of the Model D exercise. The defects in the list of documents were serious because they were numerous and undermined the utility of the list. The failure to produce electronic documents in native format was serious. The late disclosure of obviously relevant documents was serious because those documents ought to have been identified and disclosed in the first place if a competent disclosure exercise had been undertaken.

At the second stage, the explanations were either absent or unsatisfactory. The judge accepted that there had been no deliberate intention not to comply with the April order, but found at the least marked carelessness. The disclosure exercise appears to have been undertaken by the claimant personally, with his solicitor only later attempting to review and duplicate that exercise after concerns had been raised. The delay between June and October 2025 in giving any substantive response to the defendants’ concerns was itself highly damaging. Further points were only dealt with during the January 2026 hearing itself. The judge was also concerned that the explanations given suggested a misunderstanding and misapplication of proper disclosure practice.

At the third stage, all the circumstances pointed against relief. The need for litigation to be conducted efficiently and at proportionate cost, and the need to enforce compliance with rules, practice directions and orders, weighed heavily against the claimant. By late January 2026, the trial was only about fourteen weeks away. Witness statements had still not been prepared and exchanged. The judge did not accept that the remaining work could realistically be completed within the compressed timetable suggested by the claimant. In his view, the ten day trial listing would have been lost.

That mattered not only to the parties but to other court users. The judge expressly referred to the effect on the Newcastle Business and Property Courts list. There was only one resident Business and Property Courts judge at the relevant level in Newcastle to hear trials of this kind. Removing a ten day trial from the list and later having to relist it would have a serious impact on other litigants. The judge was also not satisfied that disclosure could safely be treated as complete even by January 2026, given continuing concerns about the soundness of the search methodology, the possibility that search terms may have missed documents, and the prospect that third party disclosure issues might yet arise.

In those circumstances, relief from sanctions was refused. The consequence was that the automatic sanction in the unless order stood, and the proceedings remained struck out. The judge made the principal orders needed to give effect to that outcome and adjourned certain consequential matters to the date that had previously been fixed for the pre-trial review, which would instead serve as a consequentials hearing.

Why the decision matters

This is a strong procedural decision which underlines that PD57AD disclosure is not satisfied by a rough collection of potentially relevant documents. Search based disclosure requires a disciplined process. The court expects parties to identify and disclose the methodology of their searches, produce a proper list of documents, and provide electronic material in the form required by the practice direction. Parties who treat those matters as secondary administrative detail expose themselves to substantial risk.

The judgment is also an important answer to arguments based on CPR 3.10. Where an unless order already prescribes the consequence of breach, the party in default should expect the case to be analysed through the relief from sanctions framework. Attempts to characterise substantive non-compliance as merely technical are unlikely to assist where the order required actual compliance and the defaults affect the orderly preparation of the case for trial.

The case is a further reminder that courts assess defaults in their procedural context. The claimant did not appear before the court with a single isolated mistake in an otherwise compliant case. He came before the court against a history of delay, earlier judicial concern, and a timetable that was already under pressure. In that setting, piecemeal correction after repeated chasing was never likely to attract much sympathy.

Further Reading

• Professional Negligence
• Solicitor Negligence Claims
• Loss of the Ability to Bring Litigation
• Solicitors Negligence Case Law

Contact Us

Carruthers Law acts in professional negligence disputes, including claims arising from negligent drafting, litigation advice, limitation, costs exposure and lost litigation opportunities. If you require advice about a potential claim against former solicitors or counsel, please contact Carruthers Law on 0151 541 2040 or 0203 846 2862, email info@carruthers-law.co.uk, or use the Contact Us page.

Carruthers Law
Suite 205/206 Cotton Exchange
Bixteth Street
Liverpool L3 9LQ