“In my judgment, when regard is had to these authorities the key question must always be whether or not, at the time of issuing a writ, the claimant was in a position properly to identify the essence of the tort or breach of contract complained of and if given appropriate time to marshall what it knew, to formulate particulars of claim. If the claimant was not in a position to do so, then the claimant could have no present intention of prosecuting proceedings, since it had no known basis for doing so. Whilst therefore the absence of present intention to prosecute proceedings is not enough to constitute an abuse of process, without the additional absence of known valid grounds for a claim, the latter carries with it, as a matter of necessity, the former. If a claimant cannot do that which is necessary to prosecute the claim by setting out the basis of it, even in a rudimentary way, a claimant has no business to issue a claim form at all “in the hope that something may turn up”
“However, there may be circumstances where the issue of proceedings would not be abusive in that sense, even though the firm lacked formal authority to issue them. Suppose that a firm received instructions on behalf of a corporate body or association whose governing instrument required certain procedures to be followed before the issue of legal proceedings. Suppose further that a limitation deadline was looming, that there was insufficient time for those procedures to be completed, but the chairman of the body instructed the firm to issue proceedings, confident in the belief that it was in the claimant's interest to do so and that the necessary procedures would be completed before it was time for the proceedings to be served. I do not believe that it would be an abuse of the process of the court for the firm to issue proceedings in such circumstances.”