Michael Rawlinson

Practice:

Personal Injury
Industrial Disease
Clinical Negligence

Profile:

Michael joined chambers in 2004 having practiced at 28 St. John Street, Manchester since his call in 1991.

He both claims and defends within his areas of practice.

Disease Litigation

Within the field of industrial disease claims, he has extensive experience in appearing in cases which have had wider significance beyond the individuals concerned. For example he represented the insurer-defendants in both Fairchild v Glenhaven (mesothelioma claim which has become a source of much legal analysis and development in respect of issues of causation in cancer claims) and Rothwell & Johnston and others (The Pleural Plaques test litigation) both before the House of Lords. The saving to the insurance industry of the latter litigation has been estimated to have been in the region of £1 Billion and is the first example of an entire class of established disease claims being stopped. Michael has therefore a commensurately extensive experience in the preparation for and presentation of large scale generic issues within disease litigation and has a ongoing and increasing experience of receiving instructions from insurers to investigate and analyse prospectively, certain types and aspects of disease litigation to see, once adequate research and investigation has been undertaken, how best generic defences can be deployed in individual cases. This requires him to be familiar with and to be able to analyse, assimilate and deploy very large volumes of medical, engineering, epidemiological and social historical material. Additionally this area of his practice has required him  to liaise with lawyers from  (and/or research relevant aspects of the tort recovery systems existing  in all of) the major commonwealth countries and UK Overseas Territories such as the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands etc. Within this area Michael’s highest profile litigation actually ongoing at present is the test litigation to determine the extent of the duty of care found by the Court of Appeal to notionally exist upon the National Dock Labour Board in respect of registered dockworkers who were exposed to asbestos dust.(Rice & Thompson v Secretary of State for Trade & Industry)

Michael also has a thriving practice claiming on behalf of individual Claimants in this area particularly where unusual causative agencies are in issue. He receives instructions from solicitors who range from sole practitioners to the largest national-standard firms. Recent representative examples of these sorts of cases are claims made for a nurse who alleged the development of thyroid cancer arising from exposure to radiation from medical imaging machinery; for a man who died from complications following the development of a pneumonitis arising from exposure to rancid engineering oil; men who had developed leukaemia arising from exposure to petrol fumes during the course of his occupation and who had developed lymphoma from petrol. All of these instructions (and indeed all Claimant’s instructions received in this area) are taken on a CFA basis and Michael has an adventurous approach to accepting the CFA risk in disease litigation.

Finally, Michael is standing counsel to UK Coal within the Miner’s Respiratory Disease Litigation and the Vibration White Finger Schemes (understood to be respectively the largest and second largest group litigation schemes in the world).

Head/Spinal Injury Claims

Michael has received many instructions (on both sides) in cases involving TBI and spinal injuries of maximum severity both with and without the (enormous!) benefit of Leading Counsel. Claims sizes have varied between £1 to £9 million. Those instructions, in the usual way, often include the requirement to draft both detailed and highly complex schedules and counter-schedules of loss which, in litigation of this size, often act as de facto skeleton arguments. He has extensive experience of appearing for parties in Joint Settlement Meetings, a process which he both enjoys and encourages as being an extremely efficient method of dispute resolution. He has recently given a talk to the Personal Injury Bar Association in this area of practice.

As in disease litigation, Michael has been involved in the development and analysis of generic issues. Representative past instructions have included the investigation (with an actuary) of the accuracy of Ogden Table multipliers in representing both prospective life expectation and (more importantly) healthy life expectation, the use of the 2.5% multiplier discount (prior to Eagle v Chambers) and the relationship between insurers and reinsurers in the context of treaties entered into by them prior to the coming into force of PPOs and the effect of a PPO in respect of retention limits.

 

However, Michael’s closest involvement in generic issues in this area has been on the issue of funding of the care and accommodation of/for the critically injured by local authorities/PCTs and the effect this has on levels of provable claim. In relation to claims involving injuries of maximum severity, he has extensive experience relating trelating to the theory and practice of seeking funding by statutory bodies of the claims for care and accommodation in replacement of the liability which would otherwise fall upon the insurer. His involvement has dated back to the very early days of the emergence of this issue which sits on the junction between social security, tort and public law and is an area which is as fast moving as it is multi-faceted and complex.

Military/Aviation

In addition to the above, Michael has a growing experience and interest in claims arising out of military service (acting both on behalf of individual service personnel – or their dependants – and the MOD) and in particular in relation to the detail of aircraft collisions. To this end he has accepted instructions to act on behalf of a number of the families and dependents of those 14 service personnel who were killed when Nimrod XV230 crashed on service in Afghanistan on 02.09.06, in the forthcoming coroner’s inquest in which it is anticipated a large volume of technical data will be the subject matter scrutiny and cross examination.

Clinical Negligence

Michael regularly receives instructions to act on behalf of Claimants in Clinical Negligence claims. Recent examples include a woman now in a minimally aware state following the misdiagnosis of long QT syndrome (a condition of the heart) as epilepsy and the transfemoral amputation of the leg following the failure to check for a pulse consequent upon a complex serious of fractures inflicted by an initial RTA.

Significant Sample Reported Case:

The Nimrod Crash Inquest (Oxford Coroner’s Court) – Largest loss of UK service personnel in a single incident since the Falklands War

Rice & Thompson v Secretary of State for the Department of Trade & Industry & Stuntbrand Line Ltd (2007) PIQR P23 (CA) (‘The NDLB Test Litigation’) 

Johnston v NEI International Combustion Ltd (2007) 3 WLR 876 (HL) (‘The Pleural Plaques Test Litigation’)

Cox v Transco  [2006] EWCA Civ 127 (CA)

Michael was instructed by Claimant in a mesothelioma claim and where the combination of the ravages of the illness and the effect of pain killing medication had rendered the Claimant’s memory of his exposure many decades before extremely hazy. Liability stoutly contested by the Defendant. Claimant succeeded before the Circuit Judge whose judgment was upheld in the Court of Appeal. The Judgment is an important one highlighting the types of factual inference which can be relied upon to discharge the burden of proof on the Claimant.

Bell v Todd [2002] Lloyd’s Rep Med 12 (HC)

Very early case in which the statutory funding of care/accommodation issues were raised. Michael was instructed by the Defendant RTA insurer. He had been instructed as the Junior throughout the life of this claim which settled for the lump sum equivalent of £4.5 million in June 2006. The real importance of this case is not its value but that it was reported on the funding issue which was taken as a preliminary issue. The case was therefore a direct forerunner of Sowden v Lodge; (See also the note on Sowden below)

Sowden v Lodge; Crookdake v Drury (CA) [2005] 1 WLR 2129 (CA)

Michael was instructed on both appeals in the Court of Appeal as the Defendant’s Junior. All 3 cases (that is these and Bell ) broke new ground in permitting the insurers of undoubted tortfeasors to deduct from the claim which otherwise they would have to meet, the amount of money representing the freestanding liability of the local authority or NHS to provide accommodation or care to meet the disability which the Claimant now possessed as a result of the tortfeasors’ negligence. This has led to a saving of many hundreds of millions of £s to the insurance industry.

VWF and COAD litigation schemes (HC)

Whitlam v Hazel & KGM [2004] EWCA Civ 160 (CA)

Acting for Lloyd’s Syndicate who successfully repudiated motor policy on grounds of material non-disclosure, namely the failure of the policy holder to inform them of his part- time occupation as a golf professional

Roberts v Hollins [1996] 1 WLR 583

Order 17 Rule 11 appeal

Recommendations:

Chambers & Partners 2007:
(“ Michael Rawlinson at Kings Chambers is another new addition. Widely thought of as a “truly brilliant barrister,” he is commended for his “client-friendly manner and first-rate advice.”)

Legal 500 2007:
"Michael Rawlinson is acting in the headline Pleural Plaques Test Litigation which has now reached the House of Lords"

Memberships:
 Northern Circuit Medical Law Association
PIBA
Northern and North Eastern Circuits

Career & Education:

University:

Degree: 

Year of Call:

Joined Chambers:

Panels: 

Manchester

LLB (2:1) (Harry Street Tort Prize, Lawson Prize and Dauntsey Scholarship)
1991  Inner Temple (Major scholarship)

2004

Junior Counsel to the Crown (Provincial Panel) (2003 – 2007; 2007 – ongoing)

Michael Rawlinson

Year of Call:  1991

Specialises In:
Personal Injury & Clinical Negligence

Clerked by:
 Stephen Loxton

 

 

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