Andrew has a busy chancery commercial practice, specialising in high value and complex disputes arising from commercial contracts, personal guarantees, mortgage and trust deeds and joint venture agreements, claims involving breach of trust, fiduciary duty and directors’ duties together with shareholders’ disputes and cases involving high-value professional negligence disputes, usually against financial and business advisers arising from mis-selling of investments, as well as commercial fraud including freezing injunctions and asset recovery, both for and against lenders.
Andrew is frequently instructed on matters involving cross-border enforcement of judgments and anti-suit injunctions. Frequently, such claims give rise to issues of insolvency and claims for misfeasance and preferences arise, such as in Power v Hodges [2015] EWHC 2983 (Ch), [2016] ETMR 6.
Andrew has been instructed on various cases involving mis-selling of financial investments and pension products (such as group actions involving Keydata, Arch Cru, Sterling Mortimer and Harlequin).
Recently reported cases include:
- CT Dent v Atias [2020] EWHC 2720 (Ch), involving an urgent injunctive relief against a former director requiring him to provide access to a database, website, email server and electronic files relating to the company’s business, to deliver up certain documents, and to arrange for his electronic devices and online accounts to be imaged by an independent computer specialist, and to restrain him from accessing systems and materials.
- Terracorp v Mistry [2020] EWHC 1645 (Ch), (reported in Estates Gazette 2020 2043, 42), in which the claimant company, which had sold parcels of land to the defendant purchasers under a land banking scheme, appealed against a declaration that the true interpretation of covenants in the sales contracts meant that the defendants were not liable to pay “covenant charges”.
- Grand Valley General Trading LLC v GGICO Sunteck Ltd [2019] DIFC CFI 044 and CA 007/2019, acting with HFW Dubai in relation to a challenge to the jurisdiction of DIFC Courts by reason of an agreement for LCIA arbitration in Singapore and further claims relating to the joinder of the parent company of the Second Defendant and security for costs in the DIFC CFI and a jurisdiction appeal in the DIFC Court of Appeal.
- Andrews v Stanway [2018] EWHC 3734 (QB), in which an individual subject to a freezing injunction sought a variation that would have allowed him to sell his half-share in the family home to his wife in order to fund his litigation costs.
- Andrew was instructed as lead counsel in a £21M breach of contract dispute, which ultimately settled: Dunn Motor Traction Ltd v National Express Ltd [2017] EWHC 228 (Comm).
- Trow v Durmast Group Ltd [2017] EWHC 1485 (Ch) and 3466 (Ch), in which Andrew successfully defeated a £2M fraudulent misrepresentation claim brought by a buyer in the MBO of a business failed to prove that the seller had misrepresented the level of an inter-company margin which impacted on the company’s viability.
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co v Sage [2017] EWHC 66 (QB), in which a company applied to commit the respondent for contempt for breaching the terms of a freezing order and search order.
Current ongoing cases include:
- A joint venture claim for £40M in which Andrew is instructed by Howard Kennedy, as lead counsel for the defence.
- A claim for £3M in which various claims under FSMA 2000 and the RAO are raised relating to a loan agreement and in which Andrew is led by Richard Lissack QC.
- A £2.75M claim, arising from the non-payment of a deferred purchase agreement in a JV, giving rise to claims for breach of fiduciary duty, conspiracy and inducing a breach of contract.
- A claim in an LCIA arbitration arising from a JVA in Dubai resulting from the non-payment of $50M in relation to a hotel development.