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Areas Of Practice
Practice:
Commercial team
Professional Negligence
Financial Services
Alternative Dispute Resolution
Professional Negligence
Liability of surveyors, financial advisers and lawyers
Surveyors' Liability
John has acted extensively for insurers and claimants in both defending and bringing actions against surveyors. Defence work has concentrated mainly on proceedings arising out of Building Surveys and Homebuyers' Reports relating to properties in Devon and Cornwall. There has been a particular emphasis on litigation involving Cornish properties affected by mundic decay or blighted by adverse mining searches, where appropriate searches and reports had not been recommended at time of purchase. Claimant work has involved both private litigants bringing claims for allegedly negligent pre-property purchase reports and work for building societies/banks in connection with negligently high valuations. Following the property market collapse in the early 1990's he conducted a series of claims in the TCC in London for one particular building society, which included negligent valuations of (in one case) a Hotel complex in South Wales and (in another action) a Hotel conversion to flats located on the Isle of Wight.
He has also worked on numerous 1954 Landlord & Tenant Act contested renewals for both landlords and tenants - including cases concerning leases of shops and a renewal of a lease of harbour premises in Devon.
Commercial
Mercantile disputes; construction of contracts; exclusion clauses
Financial Services Law and Regulation
John has wide experience in dealing with claims arising from mis-selling of personal pension plans, with-profits annuities, endowment policies, life time mortgages, permanent health insurance policies and a wide range of investment products.
Between 1995 and 1998 he was the lead counsel in litigation arising out of the mis-selling of personal pension plans centred on a specialist list set up in the Bristol Mercantile Court. This court was the national venue for handling some 500 claims, not addressed through the Review process. He headed a team of four other counsel who conducted this group litigation on instructions from the Royal College of Nursing, the GMB Trade Union and UNISON.
In 2000 to 2002 he was retained to advise a group of Non-GAR policyholders wishing to pursue claims for mis-selling of investment contracts by representatives of Equitable Life following the closure of the Society in the aftermath of the Hyman litigation.
Between 2002 and 2007 he was instructed in a group action on behalf of trapped annuitants claiming damages from Equitable Life for the mis-selling of with-profits annuities (conducted in the Commercial Court, London).
John also has experience in the handling of Membership and Disciplinary matters before the PIA Membership and Disciplinary Tribunal and now the Financial Services and Markets Tribunal. In 1998 he represented a major IFA Network, disciplined for delay in the conduct of the Pensions Review. He has acted for a substantial Bristol based firm of IFA's in connection with their contested application for membership of the PIA. He also appeared before the Appeal Commissioner on an appeal from a Tribunal refusal of membership to a firm of IFA's. He has regularly advised authorised persons on regulatory obligations arising out of the Pensions Review and related professional indemnity insurance issues (including subrogated claims by insurers). He has been much concerned with advising on professional indemnity insurance issues following the Rothschild decision He has acted in numerous commission claw back cases both for/against the industry and individual financial advisers, including contribution proceedings between Networks, appointed representatives and life offices where financial products have been mis-sold leading to investor claims. He has experience of applications to the PIA Ombudsman for compensation and the Financial Ombudsman Service.