A compulsive gambler who lost more than £2 million in six months went to the High Court this morning to begin a test case for damages against the bookmakers who he says negligently encouraged him.

Graham Calvert wants William Hill to compensate him after he lost not only money but also his wife, health and livelihood.

The 28-year-old greyhound trainer is claiming that the bookmakers allowed him to carry on betting even after he asked them to stop taking his money under the bookies’ own self-exclusion policy.

The case may establish for the first time that bookmakers owe a duty of care to compulsive gamblers like Mr Calvert.

His lawyers say the action is a crucial test of the betting industry’s social responsibility policies.

“It concerns how bookmakers treat people who have gambling problems via their self-exclusion policy and whether they can be held responsible when they advertise themselves as offering self-exclusion and promoting socially-responsible gambling,” Peter Hornsey, Mr Calvert’s solicitor at Ward Hadaway, said.

This morning Anneliese Day, Mr Calvert's barrister, told Mr Justice Briggs that William Hill should be held liable because it acted in breach of its own policy designed to protect problem or pathological gamblers.

“What in fact occurred was that William Hill actively monitored and manipulated [Mr Calvert’s] gambling disorder in order to gain as much revenue for their business as possible."

Miss Day told the court that Mr Calvert, from Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and Wear, was, at his own request, prevented from placing bets at all other “major bookmakers” except William Hill, which “negligently sought to encourage the claimant to go on betting sprees of hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time”.

She said the scale of her client’s gambling was “staggering” - including a £347,000 losing bet on the US to win the Ryder Cup in 2006 - and that she would be calling psychiatrists to give evidence to describe how Mr Calvert had become a “pathological gambler” which is recognised as a mental disorder.

To deal with the problem, several bookmakers including William Hill offer self-exclusion whereby a customer can ask for an account to be closed for six months or more during which time any request to reopen it is refused, the court heard.

The hearing continues.

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