We provide a wide range of advocacy and advisory services in the UK and internationally. We pride ourselves on our approachable and friendly outlook and our ability to build strong relationships with clients. Our barristers have received over 40 individual rankings covering 15 practice areas across the legal directories, including in Civil Fraud, Commercial Litigation, Insolvency and Travel amongst others. We are supported by a highly experienced, friendly and responsive clerking team, headed by James Donovan.
He is currently not practising.
James Guthrie KC’s work can broadly be described as follows.
First, he specialises in a broad range of appellate work in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. This includes Constitutional Law, Human Rights, Public Law / Judicial Review, Commercial Law, Common Law and Criminal cases. In addition, he has considerable experience of litigation at firs instance and in the Courts of Appeal in Commonwealth countries, both in an advisory capacity and as an advocate.
He has been called to the Bars of the Turks and Caicos Islands, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, St Christopher & Nevis, Grenada, Bermuda, Belize, Antigua and The Bahamas, and has appeared in the Caribbean Court of Justice (the final Court of Appeal for those Caribbean countries that no longer accept the jurisdiction of the Privy Council). He has also recently appeared by special permission in the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal of Mauritius. He appeared before the Privy Council at its first sittings in The Bahamas, and in Mauritius.
Described in the directories as a ‘first-class advocate’, and consistently recommended in the main law directories as a Leading Silk in Civil Liberties and Human Rights work, he frequently undertakes Privy Council appeals in such cases, including ‘death row’ cases.
James Guthrie was Head of Chambers from 2002 until October 2010. He was a Recorder trying criminal and civil cases up until 2021. He is a Master of the Bench of the Inner Temple and has been a Trustee of the Death Penalty Project since its inception in 2005.
Delta Petroleum (Caribbean) Ltd, British Virgin Islands Electricity Corporation [2020] UKPC 23
An Appeal before the Privy Council from the Court of Appeal of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (British Virgin Islands). The central issue in the appeal was whether a party with a right to claim relief from further performance of its obligations under a contract had in law to make an election between exercising the right and continuing to perform the contract such that, if the latter choice was made, the right to claim “performance relief” was lost.
DPP v Lagesse (Mauritius) [2020] UKPC 16
An Appeal before the Privy Council from the Supreme Court of Mauritius. This case concerned an allegation of conspiracy to import a motor vehicle into Mauritius without paying proper excise duty. The Supreme Court of Mauritius allowed an appeal from the decision of the magistrate sitting in the Intermediate Court, who had acquitted the defendants on the relevant charges. The Supreme Court directed that there should be a retrial. Two of the accused, Mr Lagesse and Mr Seeburrun, appealed to the Privy Council.
Mauritius Shipping Corp Ltd v Employment Relations Tribunal [2019] UKPC 42 | [2020] 1 All E.R. 844
Minister of Home Affairs v Barbosa (Bermuda) [2019] UKPC 41 | [2020] 1 W.L.R. 169
Bergan v Evans (St Kitts) [2019] UKPC 33
Mauritius v CT Power Ltd [2019] UKPC 27
Please contact us either by telephone: +44 (0)20 7415 7800 or email: clerks@3harecourt.com