Daniel Shapiro KC and Hamish Fraser act for the successful Defendant in a Commercial Court trial brought against a firm of insurance brokers.
Judgment has recently been handed down in Hamsard One Thousand And Forty-Three Ltd v AE Insurance Brokers Ltd [2024] EWHC 262 (Comm). A copy of the judgment can be found here.
The Claimant (“Hamsard”) brought a claim against its former insurance broker, AE Insurance Brokers Limited (“AE”), for alleged breaches of contract and/or negligence which, it argued, had led to the avoidance of an insurance policy which would have indemnified Hamsard for some millions of pounds of property damage.
AE denied the claim in its entirety, arguing that the claim was founded upon the lies of Hamsard’s director, that there was no breach of duty on AE’s part, that there was in any event no causation between the breaches that AE were said to have committed and Hamsard’s alleged losses, and that Hamsard had further failed to prove that they have suffered any recoverable loss.
After a Commercial Court trial in front of Mr Lionel Persey KC, AE were successful on each of these issues.
Mr Lionel Persey KC rejected Hamsard’s claim, having found that its director had “constructed an account which bears little resemblance to reality” in order to support the case, and that much of the expert evidence called by Hamsard could not be relied on after challenge in cross-examination.
Daniel Shapiro KC and Hamish Fraser were instructed by Zoe Burge and Joanna Owens of CMS LLP.
