Deans Court Chambers

Head of Chambers: Michael Hayton KC
Senior Clerk: Matthew Gibbons
Tenants: 100

WORK UNDERTAKEN

Civil Litigation: Personal injury (including spinal injuries, head injuries); class actions; industrial disease; fraudulent claims; road traffic and factory accidents; professional negligence; insurance, including coverage litigation, Road Traffic Act and Motor Insurers’ Bureau; contractual disputes; sale of goods; consumer credit (including credit hire); product liability; arbitration (domestic and international); technology and construction; human rights and false imprisonment.

Chancery & Commercial: Commercial arbitration; banking; carriage of goods; civil fraud and tracing of assets; corporate and personal insolvency; company law (including shareholders’ disputes and the protection of minority interest, directors’ duties and disqualification); credit and leasing; financial services; injunctions and equitable remedies; insurance and reinsurance; IP; landlord and tenant; mortgages; partnerships; pensions; probate; real property; sale of goods (domestic and international); trusts, settlements and wills.

Family: Financial remedies on divorce and dissolution of civil partnership (complex company structures, trust arrangements, pre post-nuptial agreements, offshore assets, freezing injunctions); cohabitation (agreements, ToLATA and Schedule 1 provision for children); and family provision under the Inheritance Act 1976. Children work is a specialism: members represent local authorities, parents, interveners and children in care and adoption cases (including death or serious injury to a child, a parent killed by the other, fabricated and induced illness and intergenerational sexual abuse); difficult residence and contact disputes; international movement and abduction of children; and surrogacy.

Court of Protection & Community Care Law: Cases involve unlawful removal of adults from their home; deprivation of liberty; judicial review of decisions regarding provision of services; the use of the inherent jurisdiction for vulnerable adults; the conflicting roles of the Court of Protection and the Mental Health Act 1983; welfare decisions on capacity, property and affairs decisions (including financial abuse and ratification of gifts).

Criminal: Prosecution and defence in all fields at every level including homicide and sexual offences; commercial fraud; conspiracy; drug importation and supply; excise and revenue offences; and health and safety.

Professional Disciplinary, Business Crime & Regulatory: Regulation compliance; advocacy services in criminal prosecutions under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and other legislation; inquests; licensing; trademark and copyright; rail and transport; corporate manslaughter; trading standards; food safety; environmental prosecutions; and DEFRA prosecutions. Specialist knowledge of law and procedure in tribunals, present cases for various regulatory bodies (including the GMC) while defending practitioners for the medical defence organisations; appointed to the Medical Defence Union and medical protection society panels.