Brian Griffiths

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Year of Call: 1999

Practice
Employer's Liability & Public Liability
Road traffic cases
Military Claims & Inquests
Disease litigation
Professional negligence involving legal representatives in the British Coal litigation
Accidents abroad

 

Profile

Employer's Liability and Public Liability

A significant amount of Brian's work has been to undertake an extensive number of cases on behalf of Claimants and Defendants, on both Fast Track and Multi Track. On the Defendant side he is standing counsel for one of the top four supermarkets, covering both incidents involving staff and customers at its 420 stores and warehouse operations. Over the years, the range of work has included cases involving a customer slipping on a grape to a claim from staff after being held hostage at gunpoint. Brian also has a wealth of experience in defending various church organisations in accidents on their premises via their insurers.

Road traffic cases

Brian is regularly instructed in road traffic cases, including cases of catastrophic injury.   Within such cases, he has developed a specialisation with cases involving motorcyclists. A keen motorcyclist himself, it assists him in not only gaining the confidence of the client, but also in issues of liability and quantum. A specialist firm of motorcycle solicitors, who are market leaders in this niche area, regularly instruct him; he acts for both Claimants and Defendants in such cases.  He also specialises in Low Velocity Impact cases.  

Military

With a previous military background, he has an interest in cases involving military personnel and has been involved in Employer's Liability cases involving the military, including a case of a serviceman in Northern Ireland who was blown off a helicopter- landing pad by downwash.

Coal Mining

Since 2002 he has acted as standing counsel for one of the major coal mining unions. This primarily involves being the union's counsel in the two British Coal Schemes of Miners' Respiratory Disease and Vibration White Finger (understood to be respectively the largest and second largest group litigation schemes in the world).

Before that, for two years, he was a Senior Policy Advisor to the Department of Trade and Industry in the COPD litigation and was involved with the day-to-day operational delivery in resolving over 500,000 claims, including devising protocols, such as dealing with Protected Party Claimants and Chronic Bronchitis.

With his specialist knowledge in the quantification of damages under the two Claims Handling Agreements he has lectured widely and advised upon quantum in scores of Claimants classed as Protected Parties under the schemes; this aspect of work has been for a number of individual firms and is regularly instructed for both Claimants and Defendant legal firms in satellite litigation flowing from Claimants seeking compensation from their legal representatives for profession negligence. 

As well as acting for the coal - mining trade union in the British Coal schemes, he has also dealt with a number of traumatic cases of injury whilst at work at the pit, including fatal injury.  

Other matter undertaken includes:

Animal Act cases

Highway liability claims

Inquests

CICA appeals

Injury caused by LPG burns

All manner of quantum assessments and JSMs involving 6 figure sums.

Disease litigation

Brian has also undertaken other cases such as: HAVS, WRULS, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, NIHL, asbestos and mesothelioma.
 

 

 

Highlighted Cases:

AB and Others v Department of Trade and Industry  [2005] EWCA Civ 1737

Appeal before the Master of the Rolls concerning the quantification of part of the costs in the British Coal Respiratory Disease Litigation. The DTI sought to appeal what they perceived as an over assessment of costs in the region of £370 million

AB and others v British Coal Corporation [2007] EWHC 1406 (QB)

DTI sought an Order for costs against the Claimants in a situation where the Claimants had opposed the DTI's appeal but subsequently agreed that the appeal should be dismissed upon the making of directions.

AB and others v British Coal Corporation

Within the main litigation of the Respiratory Disease litigation, instructed by a coal mining trade union and two individual firms of solicitors, to bring two applications for Declaratory Judgments against the DTI, as regards the level of costs payable to the trade union and its panel of solicitors.

Howe v Houlton and Others [2009] EWHC 3344 (QB)

Led by Mike Rawlinson QC on the liability aspect of a catastrophic running down case of a pedestrian by an articulated lorry.

Kerr v William Morrison Supermarket PLC and another [2010] EWCA Civ 271

Acted at first instance and on appeal for the Defendant supermarket in a case involving a significant LPG burn when a customer was refuelling his car. 

 

 

Memberships:

APIL
PIBA
North Eastern Circuit

 

 

Career & Education:
University: Degree: Year of Call: Joined Chambers:	Lincoln BA Law & Business  1999 Gray's Inn 2010