Serle Court barristers feature The Lawyer’s Top 20 cases for 2024. To read the article in full, view on thelawyer.com (paywalled).

Some of the cases highlighted in the Top 20 Cases article include:

The Eclipse Litigation – James Mather and Mark Wraith instructed by Stewarts

James Mather and Mark Wraith are instructed on behalf of the claimants in the Stewarts action (by Stewarts partners James Le Gallais and Alex Lerner), led by 3VB’s Jonathan Davies-Jones KC.  HSBC is defending two jointly managed actions being pursued by Stewarts and Edwin Coe on behalf of claimants who allege financial losses due to the film investment scheme, ‘Eclipse’.

IBM UK v LzLabs and others – James Weale instructed by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP

James Weale (instructed by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan (UK) LLP) acts for IBM against LzLabs and others (including the entrepreneur, John Moores) in a high-profile claim based on alleged breaches of a licence agreement and unlawful means conspiracy. The claimant alleges that the defendants engaged in unlawful reverse engineering of IBM mainframe software over several years in order to develop a rival product. The defendants deny that the terms of the licence agreement were breached and claim that they were permitted to use the information pursuant to the terms of that agreement. The trial has been listed for 8 weeks in the High Court starting in April 2024.

Municipio De Mariana and others v BHP Group and Vale – Nicholas Harrison, Jonathan McDonagh, Amy Proferes, Adrian de Froment, and Ryan Tang instructed by Pogust Goodhead

A team of Serle Court barristers are involved in Município de Mariana v BHP Group, one of the largest group actions ever commenced in this jurisdiction, described by The Lawyer as a ‘landmark trial’ for 2024, listed for trial in October representing over 700,000 Brazilian victims of the Fundão Dam disaster.