Commercial chancery barrister specialising in banking and financial services, property and professional negligence
If the average retail customer were to follow Warren Buffet’s advice never to invest in a business you can’t understand, it’s likely that people would be holding a lot more cash. Time and time again, claimants say that they didn’t really understand the product which they were sold but were assured that, in the medium …
Continue reading "Can ‘active cash’ really beat the stock market?"
Amendments to the Consumer Credit Act 1974 introducing the open-ended concept of an “unfair relationship” came into force in 2007. Subsequent case law defining or limiting this concept has been sparse. Adding to the case law, the Court of Appeal has now considered the matter in the context of the exercise of a mortgagee’s power …
Target v Redferns (decided by the House of Lords in 1995) alerted lenders to the possibility of seeking trust based remedies against their own solicitors where a mortgage transaction has gone wrong. Recently, there has been a steady stream of decisions (both in the High Court and the Court of Appeal) considering and applying Target, …
Continue reading "You Can’t Always Get What You Want: Lenders, breach of trust and Target revisited"
Our “judges and lawyers” production of Judgment at Nuremberg – first at the Tricycle Theatre in 2011 and then at the Bridewell Theatre last March – raised over £50,000 for charitable causes. Sally Knyvette, our professional director, worked tirelessly to knock us into shape. Sally’s latest venture is a near month long run of new …
Financial products are often long term in nature. Where a recommendation is poor, it may be some time before the client realises that he has been badly advised. Section 14A provides for a special limitation period in the tort of negligence (and negligence only) for those who have suffered a loss but do not have …
Continue reading "Financial mis-selling claims and section 14A of the Limitation Act 1980"
Ikbal v Sterling Law is yet another case concerning a phenomenon which is becoming increasingly and depressingly familiar to both lenders and the courts: that of a vendor, or vendor’s solicitor, who proves to be not what he seemed. Whilst the claim here was brought by a cash purchaser rather than a lender, the relevant …
Continue reading "Ikbal v Sterling Law [2013] EWHC 3291 (Ch), [2013] All ER (D) 31 (Nov)"
History associates Sir Cyril (later Viscount) Radcliffe with partition, that of India and Pakistan in 1947. It is ironic, therefore, that his name should have been adopted by a set of Chambers created as the result of a merger. As a member of that set, it was intriguing to see Radcliffe depicted in a new …
"Colonel Parker" and director Sally Knyvette were invited to the studios of Monocle 24 to talk about the diferences between barristers and actors and the issues raised by Judgment at Nuremberg. For a legal audience, these issues are particularly pertinent: the enforcement by the judiciary of bad laws, the tension between the judicial process and political expediency …
The online Box Office for the March 2013 Bridewell Theatre revival of Judgment at Nuremberg is now open. Tickets for the evening performances cost £55 (including post-performance wine and light refereshments). Tickets for the Saturday matinee are £30. Profits from the five performances will go to Paul’s Cancer Support Centre. Judgment at Nuremberg, Bridewell Theatre, …
Continue reading "Judgment at Nuremberg tickets now on sale"
The private rental sector has grown rapidly over the last 20 years. It now accounts for over 4.7 million households in the United Kingdom. Over two thirds of all private tenancies involve an agent. Yet, Which? magazine has referred to “renting roulette” and “the great letting agents gamble” whereas the RICS has described this essentially …
Peter Dodge 