Chambers UK 2020

Proficient in professional liability matters involving solicitors, valuers, accountants and other professional service providers, the set represents both defendants and claimants. It possesses notable strength in negligence actions springing from areas relating to company law, offshore finance and property.

Client Service: "The clerks provide very good service." Steve Whitaker heads the clerking team.

Silks: 

Philip Jones QC: "In addition to being technically excellent, he is able to explain matters in a way which lay clients understand, which puts them at ease." "He is a terrific leader who is certainly very incisive and gets to the heart of the issues."

Legal 500 2020

Silks:

Philip Jones QC: " Excellent on complex cases."

David Blayney QC: "Impressive on professional negligence cases."

Daniel Lightman QC: "He is incredibly able and thorough."

Hugh Norbury QC: "Very able and excellent to deal with."

Lance Ashworth QC: "Very knowledgeable."

Philip Marshall QC: "He is exceptional."

Juniors:

David Drake: "He is very able."

Richard Walford: "He is extremely knowledgeable."

Thomas Braithwaite: "He is a very talented barrister."

Andrew Bruce: "Experienced in professional negligence cases."

Solland International Ltd v Clifford Harris & Co:

Whether a professional negligence claim should be struck out as an abuse of process where the claimants had put their claim on hold for a year while they were involved in other litigation and had then spent another year considering how best to progress it, but without taking any steps to do so.

Lemos v CIBC:

A claim alleging gross negligence by professional trustees in the Cayman Islands in relation to the sale of shipping investments and the time taken for reinvestment of the proceeds (instructed by Mourant Ozannes).  Settled shortly before trial in May 2015.

Lexi Holdings v Pannone:

Philip Marshall QC and Ruth Holtham continued to appear on behalf of Lexi Holdings plc in the fall out following its collapse in circumstances of fraud.  Philip appeared in front of Briggs J on a summary judgment application against solicitors in respect of a claim for breach of mandate. The Court considered the scope of the actual and apparent authority of a managing director to give instructions to solicitors leading to misapplication of company funds.

Lexi Holdings plc (in administration) v. (1) DTZ; (2) Mace & Jones:

In a professional negligence claim brought by a mortgagee, the Defendants (a firm of valuers and a firm of solicitors) applied shortly before trial to amend their Defences to plead illegality.  The Court held that it was arguable that: (i) the Claimant was a one-man company; and (ii) there was sufficient nexus between the loss suffered and the alleged fraud, such that the amendments should be allowed provided that the trial date was not lost.

This is an interesting interlocutory decision of Briggs J in which he considers the effect of the House of Lords' decisions in Gray v. Thames Trains and Stone Rolls Ltd v. Moore Stephens on a proposed illegality defence in a professional negligence claim. In this case the professionals admitted negligence and accepted that the transaction upon which they advised; was genuine, but asserted that the Claimant's entire business was part of a fraudulent scheme.

Dickson v Christie’s:

The facts of the case are widely reported - e.g. Mail Online and BBC.

The Claimants settled a professional negligence claim immediately before trial in which they alleged that an international auction house had failed to undertake appropriate research and/or advise them to have their painting of 'Salome' cleaned and restored, when such research and/or cleaning would have revealed that the painting had been in the collection of King Charles II and was likely to have been by the hand of Titian.  The painting was subsequently sold by the auction house for £8,000.  When the painting re-appeared on the market, having been restored, it was valued at US$ 4-6 million. A case of significant interest that would, had it not settled, have provided guidance as to the duty of care of international auction houses when they agree to "Research & Advise" on art-works.

Littman v Aspen Oil (Broking) Ltd:

Case concerned a lease of commercial premises in London. The term of the lease was 5 years, but cl.10 of the lease provided that either party could terminate the lease at the end of the third year of the term by giving not less than six months' notice in writing provided that up to the termination date "in the case of a notice given by the landlord" the tenant had paid the rent and duly observed and performed the tenant's covenants. The tenant purported to bring the lease to an end pursuant to that clause. The landlord disputed the effectiveness of that notice on the grounds that the tenant was in breach of its obligations under the lease as at the termination date and contended that the words "in the case of a notice given by the landlord" were nonsensical and should be read as if they said "in the case of a notice given by the tenant".

The Court of Appeal held that: (1) as a matter of construction, the word "landlord" in clause 10 of the lease had to be construed as "tenant ". That was what the parties must have intended and any other construction would be absurd. (2) It was not necessary to decide whether, in the alternative, the clause ought to be rectified, but the majority inclined to the view that the four conditions for the rectification of a unilateral mistake were made out and that in the circumstances it did not matter that, unlike any previous case, the result of rectification would be to put the parties in a contractual position that they had never agreed since the tenant's solicitor's deliberate attempt to take advantage of the other side's obvious drafting error was inequitable.

Saab v Jones Day Reavis & Pogue:

Professional negligence claim with respect to advice given for a share placement in a Lebanese property development.

Complex loss of chance case in which the Claimants asserted multiple and alternative lost chances of realising a luxury property development in Lebanon.

Cave v Robinson Jarvis & Rolf:

A solicitor undertook the drafting of an agreement as a deliberate course of conduct. Through inadvertence, he made a negligent error in the way the agreement was worded. Held that, for "deliberate commission of a breach of duty" to be made out for the purposes of s. 32(1)(b) of the Limitation Act 1980, it was necessary that the defendant knew that he was committing a breach of duty.

Gribbon v Lutton:

The defendant solicitor had drawn up a stakeholder agreement for a prospective vendor and purchaser of property that became the subject of an interpleader dispute between them. Held that the the agreement was ineffective as a contract (and was beyond salvage by a restitutionary analysis), and that it was in any event an abuse of process for the solicitor to contest the issue of effectiveness, because that issue had been determined in the interpleader proceedings he initiated.

Cave v Robinson Jarvis & Rolf:

Held that the Court of Appeal would be bound by a previous decision of the Court of Appeal, notwithstanding that it was delivered ex tempore by a two-man court on an interlocutory appeal, unless it was manifestly wrong.