A paralysed builder who has required round-the-clock care since a car accident 23 years ago has applied to the high court to be allowed to die with the help of a doctor, carrying on the legal fight begun by another seriously disabled man last year.

Paul Lamb, 57, has taken on the case brought by Tony Nicklinson, a sufferer of "locked-in syndrome" who died last year, a week after losing his high court euthanasia battle.

After his death, Nicklinson's widow vowed to continue her late husband's fight. Jane Nicklinson said she would "support 100% anyone who is willing to take the case forward. I hope that Tony's contribution can help, and I am happy for anything he has said to be used to further the case. At the very least he has left a legacy."

On 13 March this year, a high court judge agreed to let Lamb take over Nicklinson's appeal. This week the court agreed that Lamb could be named publicly after he told them he was ready to die. "I cannot carry on as all that my life consists of is being fed and watered," he said in a witness statement. He needed help to end his life, he said: "I am simply not in a position to take tablets, jump off a tall building, hang myself, throw myself in front of a moving train."

His case will be joined to another brought by Jane Nicklinson, appealing against the judgment that condemned her husband to a life he no longer wanted to lead.

She is able to pursue a claim in her own right under article 8 (right to private and family life) of the European convention. "She suffered pain, distress and injury as a result of having to witness the cruel, distressing and painful life her husband suffered as he was not able to end his own life," said her solicitor, Saimo Chahal.

The two cases will now be heard in the court of appeal in May.

Nicklinson's lawyers had argued that the law should be changed so that a doctor who helped him to end his life when he chose could plead a defence of necessity to a charge of murder. But the court said that "changes involving matters of controversial social policy" were for parliament, and rejected Nicklinson's claim.

Lamb, a father of two like Nicklinson, told the Guardian in an interview at his home in Leeds that he wanted the right to end his life at a time and place of his choosing. "When the end comes, I want it to be in here, in that bed," he said, jutting his head towards the bed in his house in the Bramley area of the city. "I want to end my life in a peaceful, dignified way."

He was going public, he said, after seeing a video of Nicklinson learning that he had lost his appeal, his whole useless body convulsed by sobs. "It was nothing short of cruel. You do wonder sometimes, the people who make these decisions. They're not the ones in constant pain, unable to do anything for themselves."

He added: "It's something I believe in passionately. If I can be of any use to change the law, then I'll do it. Eventually the law will change. It has to. It might not be me who changes it. Maybe it will be 10 more people like me down the line. But it will change."

Lamb, a big man with a dry sense of humour, was left with quadriplegia and has no function in any of his limbs apart from a little movement in his right hand after crashing his car into a lamp-post on 21 July 1990. It is unclear what happened, but he may have fallen asleep at the wheel and was probably not wearing a seatbelt.

Lamb suffers constant and chronic pain in his left shoulder – a pain no medication can dull, though morphine or ketamine make the condition somewhere approaching bearable. He also gets engulfed periodically by waves of depression, but is currently off the anti-depressants. "I just feel sad about the pointlessness of my life," he said.

His wife divorced him in 2009, but he said his friends and family supported his decision. "My son [aged 33] said he was so proud of me," said Lamb.

In his witness statement, Lamb explained why he wants the legal right to die.

"With my level of disability it is not feasible to avail myself of the right of suicide; a right which I have in theory but not in practice … so the law does discriminate against me by on the one hand giving me a right to end my life, but on the other hand it is not a right I can actually use because of my disabilities. This just does not make sense to me. It seems like a cruel trick on me. I could starve myself, but that does not seem a very dignified way of ending my life and it would be cruel, painful and distressing for my sister and son to witness as well as my carers.

"In the last 23 years I have endured a significant amount of pain. I am in pain every single hour of every single day. I have received input from various pain specialists. I have considered having operations. I am constantly on morphine. I suffer from severe pains in the back of my head. I suffer from a pain in my shoulders where the bone has worn away.

"I consider that I have lived with these conditions for a lot of years and have given it my best shot. Now I feel worn out and I am genuinely fed up with my life. I feel that I cannot and do not want to keep living. I feel trapped by the situation and I have no way out.

"Over the past 23 years I have given it my best shot in trying to live as fully as I can, but I am now ready to go. People tell me that I must keep trying – but there is only so much that a person can take."