"impressive silks and juniors are praised for their strength in depth"
Serle Court “offers a variety of skill sets that others can’t provide, and houses some of the biggest names at the Bar”
Area of Law: International and Offshore
Dakis Hagen QC and Emma Hargreaves advised the trustee in HSBC International Trustee Limited v Tan Poh Lee FSD 175 of 2019 (IKJ), a decision of the Cayman Court on the limits of the Cayman Islands' firewall legislation.
Read MoreArea of Law: Private Client Trusts and Probate
Richard Wilson QC and James Weale (acting for the Claimant and Defendant respectively) successfully set aside two multi-million-dollar trust on the ground of equitable mistake in Hartogs v Rothschild Trust AG [2019] EWHC 1915.
Read MoreArea of Law: International and Offshore
Timothy Collingwood continues to act for the Claimants in Re L&M Trust, in proceedings in the BVI seeking to set aside a trust. He appeared at the hearing of an application to obtain unredacted copies of documents held by a receiver appointed over the trust assets.
Read MoreArea of Law: International and Offshore
In the T Trusts, Kathryn Purkis continues to advise new trustees in relation to trusteeship transfer issues arising in a network of family trusts, including in relation to an allegedly forged deed of indemnity.
Read MoreArea of Law: Private Client Trusts and Probate
James Brightwell acted for the Plaintiffs and Timothy Collingwood acted for the new trustees in the latest Tchenguiz instalment, ITG Ltd and Bayeux Ltd v Geneva Trust SA [2019] GRC 064, where the Guernsey Royal Court followed the decision in Re Z Trusts on the priority of trustee creditor claims and held that the assignment of a claim to the present trustees had resulted in the discharge of the debt.
Read MoreArea of Law: Court of Protection
Emma Hargreaves appeared in In the Matter of Z [2019] EWCOP 55, a Court of Protection decision concerning the application of the principles of open justice and the approach to requests for disclosure to a non-party of documents from proceedings conducted in private.
Read MoreArea of Law: Private Client Trusts and Probate
Constance McDonnell QC appeared before Morgan J in Barker v Confiance [2019] EWHC 1401 (Ch) in which the Judge exercised his discretion so as to make a costs order against a litigation friend, and clarified the applicable law.
Read MoreArea of Law: International and Offshore
Dominic Dowley QC, Richard Wilson QC and Zahler Bryan acted for the trustee in PTNZ v AS, a Public Trustee v Cooper application concerning the restructuring of a substantial group of English trusts, in a case involving proceedings before the English and Jersey courts.
Read MoreArea of Law: International and Offshore
John Machell QC and Dakis Hagen QC appeared before the Chief Justice of the Cayman Islands in Re B, a Public Trustee v Cooper application approving the restructuring of a $1bn trust. Emma Hargreaves was junior counsel to the Protection Committee.
Read MoreArea of Law: Tax
In The Union Castle Steamship Company Ltd v HMRC [2020] EWCA Civ 547 a case concerning the use of derivative contract rules to engineer tax deductible losses exceeding £100m, the Court of Appeal clarified the meaning of ‘loss’ and ‘arising from’ and the nature of the ‘fairly represents’ test in that context. The earlier decision of the Upper Tribunal also extended the application of transfer pricing rules to certain shareholder transactions (bonus share issues). Ruth Jordan acted for HMRC.
Read MoreArea of Law: Intellectual Property
Stephanie Thompson successfully defended Mr Lu both at the interim injunction stage and at trial from claims that he had breached restrictive covenants and should be injuncted from working for his new employer. Arnold J found that the covenants were both void for uncertainty and unenforceable for being in breach of public policy and awarded indemnity costs to Mr Lu. The case also raised important questions of severability and was discussed in the Supreme Court decision of Egon Zehnder v Tillman.
Read MoreArea of Law: Intellectual Property
In IPCom GmbH & Co KG v Vodafone Group PLC [2019] EWHC 1212 (Pat) and [2019] EWHC 1255 (Pat) Prof. Jonathan Harris KC (Hon.) acted for Vodafone in a challenge to the court's jurisdiction to hear claims for infringement of standard essential patents and FRAND, where parallel proceedings had been ongoing in the German courts.
Read MoreArea of Law: Commercial Litigation
Jonathan Harris QC (Hon.) and Zahler Bryan successfully argued that an investor in Bitcoin futures was a consumer for the purposes of the European rules of jurisdiction in Ang v Reliantco [2019] 3 W.L.R. 161.
Read MoreArea of Law: Commercial Litigation
Jonathan Harris QC (Hon.) and Adrian de Froment appeared in the trial of the governing law of an agency contract to distribute poultry equipment in North America.
Read MoreArea of Law: Commercial Litigation
Lance Ashworth QC and Dan McCourt Fritz successfully represented the Claimant in O'Brien v Moneycorp in Commercial Court proceedings concerning the sale and purchase of the entire share capital of a foreign exchange trading business.
Read MoreHugh Norbury QC and Dan McCourt Fritz acted for a corporate defendant in ArcelorMittal USA LLC v Essar Steel Ltd, part of the ongoing multi-jurisdictional dispute between the rival steel businesses.
Read MoreArea of Law: Banking and Financial Services
Jonathan Adkin QC successfully acted for one of the Defendants in Yukos Finance B.V & ors v Stephen Lynch & Ors in a five-week Commercial Court trial arising out of the Yukos Oil saga, in which allegations of corrupt participation in a rigged Russian auction were dismissed.
Read MoreArea of Law: Commercial Litigation
Jonathan Adkin QC and Adil Mohamedbhai acted for the successful defendants in Magdeev v Tsvetkov & Ors, a high-profile piece of civil fraud and commercial litigation involving various Russian individuals who had invested in a jewellery business in the UAE and Cyprus. The trial lasted three weeks. Cockerill J’s judgment ([2020] EWHC 887 (Comm)) contains a detailed analysis of the law on foreign illegality.
Read More
