Professional Negligence

Teacher Stern has significant experience acting for Claimants and Defendants in professional liability matters involving:-

• Barristers and Solicitors;
• Accountants/Auditors;
• Engineers;
• Financial Services Providers;
• Bankers;
• Insurance Brokers; and
• Construction and Property Professionals (including surveyors, architects, engineers and planners).

We adopt an incisive approach to identifying whether a professional has failed to exercise reasonable care and skill and whether the error was one that a reasonably competent professional working in the same filed would not have made. We work closely with a number of highly regarded experts from different disciplines to establish early in the course of dispute whether there is likely to have been a breach of duty.

Our property litigation team has particular expertise in claims brought on behalf of lenders against surveyors in respect of negligent portfolio valuations. We have settled significant claims on behalf of both lenders and surveyors at mediation.

In defending claims, we place emphasis on protecting the reputation of our professional clients who are faced with potential claims. Our approach is to robustly defend our clients and to provide proportionate and cost effective solutions to the disputes.

We also have significant knowledge of regulatory and procedural regimes affecting professionals and we regularly deal with bodies including the ACCA, RIBA and Financial Ombudsman Service.

Representative Professional Negligence Work

Examples of our team’s professional negligence experience include:

• Advised a client in relation to a significant claim for damages against a firm of City solicitors and a commercial silk arising out of the negligent conduct of a high court trial.
• Advised several clients in claims taken against major High Street lenders arising from the provision of negligent advice that led to the sale of Interest Rate Hedging Products.
• Advised a client in relation to a claim brought against an accountant for a failure to identify overpayments in corporation tax.
• Advised the claimant in the Court of Appeal case of DN v LB Greenwich, which held that the claimant was not given appropriate education for his autistic condition and that the education provider was professionally negligent.
• Advised solicitors defending a claim brought by professional indemnity insurers for £430,000 relating to an alleged failure to notify the correct insurers of a claim, when the Claimant insurer had paid for the cost of defending a multi-party litigation against the solicitors’ firm and paid more than £250,000 by way of settlement and legal costs.
• Advised on a £6.4m professional negligence action brought by our client bank against a national chain of surveyors, involving complex cross collateralised buy to let loans, settled at mediation shortly before trial.