News & Events
News & Events
We are pleased to announce that Anthony Lo Surdo SC has been named in Doyles Guide to the Legal Profession as a leading mediator in NSW, 2021. Anthony has been recognised for his expertise using online peer-review based surveys as well as extensive telephone and face to face interviews with clients, peers and relevant industry bodies. This category was introduced in 2017 and Anthony has been ranked every year since. Doyles Guide Doyles Guide is an awards recognition program for law firms and lawyers across Australia. Awards are attributed as “Australia wide” or for specific states and are also awarded relative to practice area or speciality. Doyles Guide rank their leading mediators across a range of mediation disciplines including general commercial…
News 7 Jul, 2021
Helen Pugh and Justina Stewart were pleased to speak to a range of solicitors, insolvency practitioners and accountants about shareholders’ and directors’ liability in relation to unlawful distributions during an MBL Learn Live webinar recently. MBL Learn Live offer live broadcast sessions in the same way as face to face seminars with the ability to engage with the speaker and other delegates through interactive features including polls, chat-box and breakout exercises. Sessions are also recorded for delegates to revisit. Distributions & Dividends Given the widely reported misuse of Covid loan schemes and the economic climate, investigation of and proceedings relating to the distribution of company assets is likely to increase. Therefore, the talk was particularly timely. Helen and Justina provided a toolkit for…
News 6 Jul, 2021
Outer Temple is pleased to announce that James Counsell QC will be speaking at the APIL Abuse Conference 2021 on 15th July. James will be speaking on the topic ‘Consent – the legal perspective’. The conference will take place on Thursday, 15th July. For the second year running, it will take place entirely virtually with delegates able to view the sessions, via Zoom, on APIL’s dedicated conference app. Recordings of the sessions will also be available to view, on-demand, for six months after the live event. James Counsell’s talk The conference will consider broadly a panoply of topics related to abuse. James‘ segment will be at 10.15am on the topic of ‘Consent – the legal perspective’. This will be one of eight talks, with the…
News 2 Jul, 2021
In this edition, Paul Barton checks in for a virtual coffee with Matt Gatenby, Senior Partner & Head of Litigation at Travlaw, to find out a bit more about how he got into travel law and why he enjoys it so much. How did you become involved with travel law? Largely by accident! Having completed a Geography degree I initially took a customer services role at what was then Thomas Cook’s burgeoning tour operating business dealing with complaints and claims. One thing lead to another in the sense that I progressed within the business to the point where a spot in their in-house legal team was the next obvious step, and at that point I was part of the travel law business!…
News 2 Jul, 2021
Alex Haines and Victoria Brown have been instructed in two cases currently going through the internal justice system of the Organization of American States in Washington DC. The First International Conference of American States held in Washington DC between October 1889 and April 1890 approved the establishment of the International Union of American Republics that was subsequently reconstituted as the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1948 when the Charter of the OAS was signed in Bogotá, Colombia. The OAS brings together all 35 member states of the Americas and constitutes the main political, juridical, and social governmental forum in the hemisphere. In addition, it has granted permanent observer status to 69 states, as well as to the EU. As with most international organisations, the…
News 1 Jul, 2021
Chloë Bell successfully represented the Claimants in obtaining a series of interim proprietary and freezing injunctions in a cryptoasset misappropriation case in the London Circuit Commercial Court and the Central London County Court ((1) Lubin Betancourt Reyes (2) Custodial Management Solutions Limited v (1) Persons Unknown x 3 (2) Tether Holdings Limited (3) Binance Holdings Limited (LM-2021-000083 and H10CL251)) [2021] EWHC 1938 (Comm). The injunctions are a further example of English courts demonstrating commercial pragmatism and flexibility in this fast-developing area of law. They also represent a welcome departure from the problematic position courts had seemingly adopted on serving Norwich Pharmacal and Banker’s Trust orders out of the jurisdiction. The Facts The Claimants were intending to pay a business contact for services provided…
News 23 Jun, 2021
James Counsell QC represented Dr Ashish Dutta throughout his fitness to practise hearing, the subsequent appeal and then the decision on costs. The decision is one of the first successful contested applications for costs made against the GMC under the revised FTP rules. The Medical Practitioners Tribunal (“MPT”), the tribunal which deals with disciplinary cases against doctors on behalf of the General Medical Council (“GMC”), made an order that the GMC should pay the doctor’s costs of defending proceedings which ought not to have been brought. Its determination can be read here. James Counsell represented Dr Ashish Dutta throughout his fitness to practise (“FTP”) hearing, the subsequent appeal and then the decision on costs. The Tribunal heard that Dr Dutta, a cosmetic…
News 23 Jun, 2021
Alex Haines and Sophie O’Sullivan have recently been instructed to act for a senior international civil servant at the African Union Commission (AUC) in relation to a number of ongoing matters, including disciplinary proceedings involving serious allegations of multi-million pound misappropriation of African Union (AU) funds and false accounting. Barristers in Outer Temple Chambers’ International Team are frequently instructed in cases involving international organisations whose disciplinary and regulatory frameworks are often little known about. International Organisations are established by treaty and possess their own international legal personalities. They also enjoy immunity from suit and – through the application of inter alia international human rights law – most have set up internal justice systems that deal with institutional matters. The African Union The AU is a…
News 22 Jun, 2021
Today, the Supreme Court handed down the eagerly anticipated judgment of Khan v Meadows [2021] UKSC 21. Eliot Woolf QC acted on behalf of the Claimant, instructed by Jacqui Hayat at Taylor Rose MW. Khan v Meadows raised a novel question unanswered in wrongful birth jurisprudence: if a child born with two disabilities would not have been born were it not for a doctor’s failure to advise of the risk of being born with one of those disabilities, can the mother recover the cost of both disabilities or is she restricted to those associated with the disability about which the doctor failed to advise? In Khan, the Claimant gave birth to a child with haemophilia and autism. Before the claimant became pregnant, she consulted her GP to determine whether…
News 18 Jun, 2021
The High Court gives important judgment in Punter Southall Governance Services Ltd v Hazlett [2021] EWHC 1652 (Ch) in favour of beneficiaries of the Axminster pension scheme represented by Andrew Short QC and Stephen Butler (instructed by Osborne Clarke LLP). This is a key judgment on limitation and interest in trust and pension claims. Morgan J held: that there is no applicable limitation period in a claim by a beneficiary against trustees for an account of arrears where the trustee is still in possession of trust property; and that the court has the power to award interest on payments of equitable compensation for breach of trust where a breach of trust claim is brought following underpayment of pension. The court also gave important guidance on the…
News 18 Jun, 2021
The High Court yesterday granted permission to bring judicial review proceedings in The Queen (On the Application of ZLL) v The London Borough of Camden. Joshua Hitchens acts for the Claimant instructed by Derek Bernardi of Camden Community Law Centre. The case relates to the accommodation of homeless people during the pandemic and whether leaving the homeless on the streets during Covid-19 is automatically a breach of the rough sleeper’s rights under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Camden considers that the “Everyone In” programme instigated by central government in March 2020, requiring all those at risk of rough sleeping to be accommodated has come to an end. It asserts that only those who have Covid-19 or are symptomatic, those rough…
News 16 Jun, 2021
Having acted as counsel in Britvic plc v Britvic Pensions Limited & Simon Mohun [2021] EWHC Civ 867, Philip Stear has written a case summary explaining why the Court of Appeal overturned the previous decision and why a scheme employer could direct increases lower than RPI on the true construction of the scheme’s pension increase rules. In a ruling handed down on 10 June 2021 ([2021] EWCA Civ 867), the Court of Appeal has overturned the High Court decision in Britivc plc v Britvic Pensions Limited & Simon Mohun [2020] EWHC 118 (Ch). There, His Honour Judge Hodge QC had held that the words “or any other rate”, in a pension increase rule, were to be construed as meaning “any higher rate”, as a…
News 15 Jun, 2021
