A compulsive gambler who lost more than £2 million lost again yesterday when a High Court judge ruled he could not claim compensation and damages from his bookmakers.

Mr Justice Briggs ruled that William Hill owed Graham Calvert no duty of care, even though he had asked them to stop taking his money under their self-exclusion policy.

The judge said that although William Hill had agreed to exclude Mr Calvert from telephone gambling but failed to take reasonable steps to do so, pathological gambling would still probably have led to his financial ruin – but over a longer period.

Mr Justice Briggs, in a summary of his ruling, said: “William Hill’s failure to take reasonable care to exclude him from telephone gambling. . . did not therefore cause Mr Calvert any measurable financial or other loss.”

Mr Calvert sued William Hill after he said he lost not only money but also his wife, health and livelihood.

Anneliese Day, who represented the 28-year-old greyhound trainer at the High Court in London, argued last month that William Hill should be held liable because it failed to operate its own policy.

She said Mr Calvert, from Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and Wear, was hoping to establish in law for the first time a duty of care by bookmakers for people in his circumstances. She said that the scale of her client’s gambling was “staggering” during periods of mania when he placed huge multiple bets in a few hours.

He lost about £347,000 in one bet when he backed the US to win the 2006 Ryder Cup.

Miss Day said her client, who borrowed money to fund his habit, was an accomplished greyhound trainer who ran the family business from a farm in Co Durham. He was once “comfortably well-off” and had been involved in gambling for most of his life.

“The claimant’s descent from betting being a hobby to betting being a disorder appears to have commenced when he began betting by telephone.” Mr Calvert began “staking larger and larger sums of money with increasing frequency and decreasing regard for the consequences”.

Mr Calvert now faces huge legal costs, although his lawyers say he has no money to pay. He had already borrowed hundreds of thousands of pounds, Ms Day told the judge, and was fighting to keep his home.

The judge ordered that Mr Calvert make an interim payment of £175,000 costs, although there is no guarantee that William Hill will ever receive the money. The bookmaker’s legal costs are estimated at about £420,000, and Mr Justice Briggs said that Mr Calvert was liable for all but 20 per cent of the final bill. He reduced it by that amount because of William Hill’s “lamentable” late disclosure of key evidence in the case, relating to disciplinary action taken against an employee who failed to implement a self-exclusion request in May 2006.

The judge refused Mr Calvert right to appeal, although he will be able to take his case to the Court of Appeal.

Explore Law

• Columnists

• Law Panel

• Law Reports

• Student Law

Times Recommends

• Linklaters trounces rivals as UK's biggest firm
• Clifford Chance profits plunge 37 per cent
• Casual drinkers hit by spread of 'dry' zones