In his early years, he had a broad based general common law practice that included personal injury, contract, landlord and tenant, employment and family law work, but more recently his practice has concentrated on personal injury (especially travel) cases, especially those with a foreign element; professional negligence cases against doctors, solicitors, fine art valuers and other professionals and on professional regulatory work, particularly in the healthcare field.
He has many years’ experience of handling foreign accident and illness cases, including multi-party claims, and frequently acts in cases involving complex issues of jurisdiction and conflicts of law. In recent years, he has developed a special expertise in acting for claimants who have suffered injuries or illnesses while working overseas, particularly for international security companies and in the oil industry. He has immense experience of the Package Travel Regulations and he recently acted for the claimant in the leading case on food poisoning claims against tour operators, both at first instance and in the Court of Appeal
For the past 2½ years he has acted for subpostmasters claiming compensation arising out of the Post Office Horizon scandal in conjunction with Paul Marshall of counsel and the solicitors’ firm of Simons Muirhead Burton.
Andrew’s professional negligence practice covers most professions. He acted on behalf of a claimant who brought a claim against a leading auction house for misattributing a painting as a copy that was subsequently found to be the work of a Renaissance master worth £18 million. He has also brought a claim against a solicitor for failing to advise a house purchaser to insure a property on exchange when the house burned down between exchange and completion. He has conducted many claims against doctors covering a wide spectrum of negligent practice extending from failure to diagnose early signs of cancer to failure to identify foetal distress with the result that a baby was born with cerebral palsy and failure to make an early diagnosis of a fracture with disastrous consequences for the recovery of the patient.
Some of his professional negligence work also has a foreign dimension. For example, he acted for a British soldier who brought a clinical negligence claim against the surgeons who conducted an operation to repair his fractured right ankle which was held to be statute-barred under German law in Spring v. Evangelisches Krankenhaus [2019] EWHC 3420. He settled a case brought by an aid worker employed by a European NGO against a Nigerian Hospital for failing to diagnose advanced sepsis while the worker was being investigated for an unidentified illness. He represented the widow of a locally engaged fitter who contracted mesothelioma many years after working for the Royal Navy in its dockyard in Singapore in a case that involved every possible complication of jurisdiction and applicable law and in which even the employment status of the deceased fitter is the subject of dispute between the parties and that settled on favourable terms.
Andrew has acted for claimants who have undergone cosmetic surgery operations in foreign jurisdictions which have been negligently performed. These operations are often arranged on the internet and give rise to complicated issues of jurisdiction and applicable law and also disputes as to whether or not the underlying contracts are governed by the Package Travel Regulations.
Andrew has for many years acted as a legal assessor for a variety of different regulatory bodies, including the NMC (Nursing & Midwifery Council), the GMC (General Medical Council) and its successor body, the MPTS (Medical Practitioners’ Tribunal Service), the GCC (General Chiropractic Council), CIMA (the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants) and CIPFA (the Chartered Institute of Public Finance Accountants).
He finds his experience of regulatory work provides helpful insights into claims which he is asked to conduct against doctors and nurses and other healthcare professionals. He has recently advised a qualified doctor working for a pharmaceutical company as to whether he could properly prescribe an as yet unapproved drug to a patient suffering from dementia based on the consent of her husband who had power of attorney consistently with his professional duty under the GMC guidance Good Medical Practice.
Andrew represented the claimants in a food poisoning claim against TUI, which established that tour operators are strictly liable for providing contaminated food on package holidays and which was the subject of an unsuccessful appeal by the tour operator to the Court of Appeal in Wood v. TUI Travel Plc [2018] QB 927. It had been hoped that this case would clarify the law on such claims, but because of certain obiter dicta by two members of the Court of Appeal both sides claimed a victory and it has resulted in a very large increase in food poisoning claims arising from package holidays since the ruling and a substantial increase in work for members of chambers acting for both sides as a result!
Following on from this ruling, Andrew has acted for two claimants who brought claims against tour operators for causing them to contract legionnaires’ disease from contaminated water supplied to their hotel bedroom alleging that these are also strict liability claims under the same supply of goods legislation as food poisoning claims.
He has also acted in two cases for claimants who alleged that they were poisoned by exposure to H2S while visiting an oil refinery as part of the security protection for industry guests.
In addition to the normal type of claims for accidents and injuries occurring on package holidays, Andrew has acted for claimants who been killed or injured in unusual situations, including a group of tourists seriously injured by machete attacks by intruders entering their tent while they were on safari, a tourist drowned while taking part in a snorkelling lesson and tourists attacked by a polar bear and a crocodile. The polar bear claim was more successful than the crocodile claim!
Since April 2023 Andrew has been heavily engaged in conducting compensation claims on behalf of 11 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses who were wrongly prosecuted and (in most cases) convicted of theft or false accounting as a result of the false financial shortfalls recorded by the Horizon computer system supplied to the Post Office by Fujitsu and introduced in all subpostoffices from 2001 onwards. In 3 cases, liability was strenuously denied by the Post Office on technical grounds (in one case the claimant was the widow of the subpostmaster who had committed suicide as a result of being falsely accused of dishonesty; in another case the claimant had contracted a disabling neurological disease which the Post Office refused to admit was indirectly caused by its wrongful prosecution and conviction of the claimant).
In all cases, the Post Office has employed leading firms of external solicitors to take every possible point to challenge the quantum claims which have been drafted with the help of employment and accountancy experts on behalf of the claimant despite the absence of any expert evidence adduced by the Post Office. After more than 2 years of difficult negotiations in the face of unremittingly obstructive conduct on the part of the Post Office, liability has now been admitted in relation to all 11 claims (in 2 cases only after being referred to arbitration before Lord Dyson) and the cases are proceeding towards settlement.
Please contact us either by telephone: +44 (0)20 7415 7800 or email: clerks@3harecourt.com
