James Counsell KC secures settlement of £900,000 for former Royal Navy chef

James Counsell KC has secured £900,000 for a former Royal Navy chef at a settlement meeting on 5 September 2025. The settlement is believed to be to be one of the largest ever for this kind of injury.

The Claimant’s naval service had been cut short after she suffered a condition known as ‘non-freezing cold injuries’, affecting both hands and feet as a result of exposure to extremely cold conditions on an exercise in Norway in 2019.

She later had to be medically discharged due to injuries, some of which remain with her and are permanent. The Claimant, whose image was and still is used by the Royal Navy on promotional recruitment and training material, had an excellent record in service and ambitions to transfer to the submarine service and remain in the Navy until the age of 60. All of that was lost as a result of the injuries.

James Counsell KC led James Pickering of 12KBW in this case. They were instructed by Nia-Wyn Evans and Annalisa Magno of Hugh James.

Find out more

James Counsell KC is widely recognised in the fields of Clinical and Professional Negligence, Personal Injury, regulatory and disciplinary hearings  and Financial Services claims, both in the UK and abroad. James acts mostly for claimants in the full range of personal injury work. For the past few years, he has specialised in acting for survivors in non-recent sexual abuse claims against numerous institutions, schools and individuals and is a leading claimant lawyer in this field, regularly being asked to speak on topical issues. Besides these claims, James has a busy practice in complex high value PI claims, mostly but not exclusively for claimants.

To find out more about James, contact Paul Barton on +44 (0)207 427 4907 or Graham Woods on +44 (0)207 427 4902 for a confidential discussion.

News 3 Nov, 2025