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Dale Martin KC

Dale Martin KC

Silk: 2019 | Call: 1997

King's Counsel

"Dale has an exceptional ability to strategise and his attention to detail is superb."

Chambers & Partners 2023

"Dale is fantastic to work with. He is bright, always very prepared, hugely hardworking, a real team player, and his advocacy is strong."

Legal 500 2023

"He is very clever and he is the person you go to if you want someone who really gets into the law and who will work on untested arguments."

Chambers & Partners 2022

"He is calm under pressure, he is tenacious and he is bright."

Chambers & Partners 2022

"Very bright and hard-working, thoughtful, and strong on equal pay."

Legal 500 2022

"He's incredibly bright, has fantastic attention to detail and is very hands-on." "He gets straight to the point and doesn't give in."

Chambers & Partners 2021

"Tenacious and very bright, with excellent drafting - he is a great team member. He is meticulous in his preparation and inventive in his solutions. A credit to his chambers and the profession."

Legal 500 2021

"Dale is technically brilliant and his legal knowledge is outstanding."

Legal 500 2019/20

"He masters the detail and gives good, sound, incredibly commercial advice." "Very sharp-witted, clear and great with clients."

Chambers & Partners 2020

Dale Martin KC

"Dale has an exceptional ability to strategise and his attention to detail is superb."

Chambers & Partners 2023

"Dale is fantastic to work with. He is bright, always very prepared, hugely hardworking, a real team player, and his advocacy is strong."

Legal 500 2023

"He is very clever and he is the person you go to if you want someone who really gets into the law and who will work on untested arguments."

Chambers & Partners 2022

"He is calm under pressure, he is tenacious and he is bright."

Chambers & Partners 2022

"Very bright and hard-working, thoughtful, and strong on equal pay."

Legal 500 2022

"He's incredibly bright, has fantastic attention to detail and is very hands-on." "He gets straight to the point and doesn't give in."

Chambers & Partners 2021

"Tenacious and very bright, with excellent drafting - he is a great team member. He is meticulous in his preparation and inventive in his solutions. A credit to his chambers and the profession."

Legal 500 2021

"Dale is technically brilliant and his legal knowledge is outstanding."

Legal 500 2019/20

"He masters the detail and gives good, sound, incredibly commercial advice." "Very sharp-witted, clear and great with clients."

Chambers & Partners 2020

Contact

Dale Martin KC is one of the UK’s leading specialists in employment and commercial law. He is often instructed in appeals, in business-critical injunctive cases, in long-running multi-claimant litigation, and in cases concerning high net worth individuals. With a keen attention to detail and a compelling advocacy style, Dale has a formidable reputation. Dale’s team skills, his responsiveness and his reliability to work to deadlines are also highly valued amongst instructing solicitors. Dale is a natural trial and appellate advocate but uses his strategic insight, commercial judgement and tactical nous to position cases for favourable and confidential settlement where this achieves his clients’ objectives.

Ranked for a number of years by Chambers & Partners and Legal 500 as a leading employment practitioner, Dale’s practice encompasses injunctionsrestrictive covenant and confidential information disputesbonusesfiduciary dutiesshareholder disputescontractual disputes, statutory claims including discrimination, whistleblowing and unfair dismissalTUPEtrade union litigationinternal investigations and mediation/ADR. He also specialises in class-action litigation in the fields of equal pay and working time.

“Dale has an exceptional ability to strategise and his attention to detail is superb.” Chambers & Partners 2023

Dale is fantastic to work with. He is bright, always very prepared, hugely hardworking, a real team player, and his advocacy is strong.” Legal 500 2023

“He is very clever and he is the person you go to if you want someone who really gets into the law and who will work on untested arguments.” Chambers & Partners 2022

“He is calm under pressure, he is tenacious and he is bright.” Chambers & Partners 2022

Very bright and hard-working, thoughtful, and strong on equal pay.” Legal 500 2022

“He’s incredibly bright, has fantastic attention to detail and is very hands-on.” “He gets straight to the point and doesn’t give in.” Chambers & Partners 2021

“Tenacious and very bright, with excellent drafting – he is a great team member. He is meticulous in his preparation and inventive in his solutions. A credit to his chambers and the profession.” Legal 500 2021

“He masters the detail and gives good, sound, incredibly commercial advice.” “Very sharp-witted, clear and great with clients.” Chambers & Partners 2020

Dale’s recent work includes:

  • Appearing in and advising on numerous multi-party/business protection injunctive proceedings and related damages claims. Examples from 2022 include:
    • appeared in a team move injunction application brought against numerous defendants alleging diversion of employees and clients of a large accountancy practice, breach of fiduciary duties and vendor/purchaser and employment restrictive covenants, and claiming springboard relief and orders to prevent misuse of confidential information/imaging of devices.
    • appeared in an injunction application brought against two departing employees in the electronics industry, involving complex legal submissions on the extent of protectable ‘confidential information’ and springboard relief, the limitations of such protection where no (or ineffectual) restrictive covenants are in place and the proper approach to ‘American Cyanamid plus’ in the springboard context (ongoing).
    • Advising a pharmaceutical sales and distribution business as to a damages claim based on a recently discovered but historical multi-million pound diversion of business carried out by its former managing director, who engaged in a covert conspiracy with others to divert business and the loyalty of clients and staff over a course of many months. The case was paper heavy and the investigatory work of piecing together the chronology of unlawful activity was highly complex.
    • Appearing on behalf of a company making its own claim for debt/damages for breach of fiduciary duties and contractual obligations against the petitioning director/shareholder in the context of minority shareholder/unfair prejudice proceedings between the two main shareholder/directors of the business (trial in 2023).
    • Instructed to appear in a 7 day trial in September 2022 brought by a telecommunications company against two directors who were sued for breach of fiduciary duties and pursuant to a Share Purchase Agreement (SPA) concerning their alleged establishment of a competing business and other unauthorised activity during employment. The directors counter-claimed for substantial outstanding payments under the SPA (the case settled confidentially shortly before trial).
  • Acting in appellate, civil and employment tribunal arenas defending multiple equal pay claims, Dale is one of the few true respondent experts in this area. Dale appeared at the Courtof Appeal following a successful three-day appeal to the EAT on requirements for presentation of multiple claims in the context of over 1000 equal pay claims against Dale’s supermarket client Asda Stores Ltd v. Brierley [2019] ICR 910. Dale appeared at the EAT in 2020 in an appeal concerning the requirements for making amendments in tribunal proceedings Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd v. Ahmed. Dale was also instructed in an appeal relating to Early Conciliation certificates in the context of equal pay Clark v. Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd [2023] ICR 20, [2022] IRLR 996. Dale continues to defend multiple equal pay claims for a number of retailers in both the employment tribunal and the civil courts.
  • Acting in a 15 day breach of fiduciary duty/alleged civil fraud trial arising out of a Share Purchase Agreement with the director and former owner of the business and an alleged related conspiracy with a senior employee. Following Judgment and costs being awarded in his client’s favour, Dale was instructed on two appeals, one on the issue of informed consent in the context of breach of fiduciary duty, one on the requirements of Part 36 Offers.   Dale also appeared at the High Court in a related £1m+ claim of misrepresentation and mistake in respect of earn out consideration paid pursuant to the SPA, Reader v. Spie Ltd; Spie UK Ltd v. Garside [2020] EWHC 3743 (QB), [2021] EWHC 1221 (QB).
  • Appearing on behalf of a family property company in a complex and paper heavy case involving allegations of dishonesty/gross misconduct brought by a former Managing Director claiming both unfair dismissal in the employment tribunal and threatening substantial high court litigation for bonus and salary. An appeal was made to the Employment Appeal Tribunal following Dale’s successful application for a deposit in the tribunal (2022, ongoing).
  • Instructed by a leading petrochemical institution to appear in a three week employment tribunal trial brought by two traders claiming race discriminationand career-long losses (2021).
  • Advising a large employer with regard to the application of the National Minimum Wage legislation to operatives at its distribution centre sites. This involved consideration of the highly complex provisions as to classification of workers within the pre- and post-2020 regimes, transitional provisions, calculation of the hours to which the legislation related, payment of workers, the provisions as to fines and penalties and the effect of TUPE transfers in relation to ongoing compliance (2022).
  • Advising a university in relation to legal obligations towards teaching staff concerning strikes and action short of a strike, including whether it was unlawful to use recordings of lectures in place of live teaching (2022).
  • Acting on behalf of a boutique and high tech oil/gas company that disciplined its high earning CEO/director/shareholder for sharing confidential information concerning a competitor’s bid in a bid process in which the Company was also participating, in contravention of EU and UK competition law. CEO was recorded covertly and claimed breach of his privacy. Dale advised substantially as to the internal investigation and the shareholder dispute and defended the Company in proceedings. The former CEO intimated minority shareholder proceedings and began an employment tribunal claim (2021).
  • Acting on behalf of a leading regional law firm in two separate confidential internal investigationsand the exit of two partners guilty of gross misconduct, poor client service and/or negligence (2021).

Employee Competition & Injunctions

Employment Appeal Tribunal & Employment Tribunal Work

Fiduciary Duties, Shareholder and Contractual Disputes

Internal Investigations

Lectures & Seminars

Memberships

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