Areas of Work
Personal Injury and Fatal Accidents
Both Chambers and Partners and the Legal 500 recommend 1 Temple Gardens for personal injury work.
"1 Temple Gardens is a widely endorsed set with 'an accessible, responsive' ethos and some very talented juniors." (Legal 500: 2007)
1 Temple Gardens is instructed in all aspects of personal injury including:
- Breach of Statutory Duty
- Catastrophic Injury
- Employer's Liability
- Fatal Accidents
- Highway Authorities
- Industrial Disease
- Injuries Caused by Animals
- Inquests
- Occupiers' Liability
- Road Traffic Accidents
John Bate-Williams, James Bell, Marcus Grant, Richard Roberts, Emma-Jane Hobbs, Charles Curtis and Alexander Glassbrook are all recommended by the Legal 500 in respect of personal injury work.
Members of Chambers act for both Claimant and Defendants. Conditional Fee work is undertaken.
Senior practitioners in chambers specialise in high value brain and spinal injury, the highest being recorded in 2005 as claimed at £9 ½ million. Indeed, in relation to Defence work certain members are on the major insurers' specialist panels for catastrophic injury.
Members of Chambers also specialise in Fatal Accident cases and have lectured nationwide upon the subject.
Members of 1 Temple Gardens have appeared in leading personal injury cases including:
Burton v Kingsbury [2007] EWHC 2091 - £6.3m damages for personal injury following a road traffic accident in which the claimant had been rendered quadriplegic (John Bate-Williams).
Moore v (1) Secretary of State for Transport (2) Motor Insurers' Bureau (QB) [2007] EWHC 879 - C brought a Francovich claim concerning the UK's implementation of the Second Motor Insurance Directive and, in particular, those parts of it implemented through the Untraced Drivers Agreement 1972 made between D1 and D2. At a limitation hearing, Eady J held that the 6-year limitation period ran from the date of the accident giving rise to C's right to compensation from the MIB. C's claim, which had been issued more than 6 years after the accident, was therefore dismissed. On a summary judgment application, heard at the same time, the court concluded that an alleged defect in the MIB's handling of C's claim under the 1972 Agreement did not give rise to a real prospect of success against the State in C's Francovich claim (David Barr).
Mountford v Newlands School (CA) [2007] EWCA Civ 21 - a school was held vicariously liable when a member of staff had selected a boy for a junior rugby team who was well over the age group and that boy's size, weight and maturity contributed to an opposing player being injured (Tim Kevan).
McCoubrey v Ministry of Defence (CA) [2007] EWCA Civ 17 - the correct approach to the issue raised by s.14(2) of the Limitation Act in respect of a Claimant seeking to bring a personal injury claim outside the three-year limitation period laid down in s.11(4)(a) was to consider the reaction to the injury, not to its possible consequences, of a reasonable person in the objective circumstances of the Claimant, disregarding his actual personal attributes (Robin Tam QC).
Armstrong v First York (CA) Times, January 19, 2005 - where a trial judge had found that the claimants had been honest and reliable witnesses, he was entitled to find that there had been a flaw in the evidence of an expert, even when he could not identify the error, as there was always a possibility that an expert could have been wrong (Marcus Grant).