A federal judge in Newark has declined to enjoin future lawsuits against a lawyer and his firm by a disgruntled ex-client whose last suit was deemed to be "frivolous in the extreme."

U.S. District Judge Kevin McNulty dismissed a suit filed by John Fink against Flaster Greenberg and attorney Philip Kirchner on Wednesday, finding the issues were already dealt with in a prior case that was dismissed. But McNulty denied a motion by Kirchner and the firm to enjoin their former client from making any more filings against them without a court order.

Barring a litigant from filing future complaints against other parties without prior approval is "a procedure which poses administrative and other difficulties of its own," McNulty said. While he expressed sympathy with Kirchner and Flaster Greenberg for having to litigate claims that he said were "frivolous in the extreme" and resolved in prior proceedings, McNulty said "[e]xperience teaches that litigation over whether a new complaint violates the precise terms of an injunction may merely add a layer of complication to what should be an ordinary motion-to-dismiss analysis, accompanied by (if appropriate) a motion for sanctions."

Fink, a Forest Hills, New York, resident, filed a legal malpractice suit against Kirchner and Flaster Greenberg in 2012 over their representation of him in a suit he filed against a company called Advanced Logic Systems that he claimed failed to repay him an $835,000 loan. U.S. District Judge Noel Hillman dismissed that suit in 2016. Fink appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which affirmed Hillman's ruling in May 2018. Fink filed a certiorari petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, which was also denied.

Fink then filed a new suit in April 2019, naming as defendants Hillman and the Third Circuit judges who heard his appeal—D. Michael Fisher, Cheryl Ann Krause and Patty Shwartz—in addition to Kirchner and Flaster Greenberg. That suit claimed they had committed "fraud on the court."

The case was then transferred to McNulty, who dismissed Hillman and the appeals court judges from the case last June on judicial immunity grounds.

Kirchner and Flaster Greenberg moved to dismiss the suit, arguing that the issues raised were already ruled on by Hillman in Fink's first suit. McNulty said the conditions to dismiss for claim proclusion were met—a final judgment was entered in the first suit; the second suit involved the same parties—Fink, Kirchner and Flaster Greenberg; and the second suit was based on the same causes of action as the first suit.

"As against the moving defendants here, Kircher and Flaster Greenberg, this is no more than a repackaging of the underlying claims in the malpractice action," McNulty wrote. "The 'claim' of malpractice against the lawyer defendants is the same in both actions."

The only remedy for any claimed error in the prior suit lies in the federal appeals courts, McNulty wrote.

"Mr. Fink took advantage of all possible avenues to appeal and raised the very substance of his concerns here in his Third Circuit Appeal. The Third Circuit affirmed Judge Hillman's orders dismissing the Malpractice Action. I am bound by the Third Circuit's precedent. Accordingly, defendants motion to dismiss is granted," McNulty wrote.

The lawyer for Kirchner and Flaster Greenberg, Christopher Carey of McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter in Newark, declined to comment on the ruling.

Fink could not be reached. A phone number listed for him in court records was not in service, and he did not respond to an email sent to an address listed in court records.