James Berry
UK Guide 2025
Band 4 : Litigation
Band 4
About
Provided by James Berry
Practice Areas
James is a partner and leads Freeths’ Dispute Resolution team in its Sheffield office. He is a skilled commercial litigator and has a proven track record of success with extensive High Court experience. He regularly advises clients in the manufacturing, construction and technology sectors across a wide variety of commercial disputes including complex IT issues, shareholder disputes, claims arising from sale and purchase agreements, warranty claims, professional negligence claims and commercial contract disputes. He also has extensive experience in handling interim injunction applications and dealing with enforcement and insolvency related issues.
Recent cases include:
Acting on various matters involving claims for unfair prejudice (both Claimant and Defendant).
• Pursuing a multimillion-pound professional negligence claim against a leading regional law firm and leading KC.
• Acting for a technology company in a claim against the European Commission in proceedings issued in the European General Court.
• Successfully seeking the dismissal of a winding up petition and then defending the subsequent appeal made to the Court of Appeal.
• Acting on behalf of an international manufacturing business where former employees stole confidential information for the purposes of setting up a competing business.
• Acting for an engineering business in relation to the pursuit of alleged breach of warranty claims.
Career
James was formerly a Partner at Irwin Mitchell LLP where he trained and spent almost 12 years before joining Freeths in April 2018
Personal
James enjoys playing a variety of sports and as well as being a keen cyclist, he is a frustrated golfer, avid cyclist and novice triathlete.
Chambers Review
UK
James Berry is head of dispute resolution at Freeths in Sheffield. He is well-regarded for his commercial disputes practice and acts on a variety of matters, including shareholder disputes and breach of contract claims.
Strengths
Provided by Chambers
"James is very competent and has a good, careful approach to matters."
"He is a huge asset to us and is very knowledgeable and professional."
"James is very competent and has a good, careful approach to matters."
"He is a huge asset to us and is very knowledgeable and professional."