Commercial
The vast majority of Benedict’s work is commercial in flavour. Through his insurance, construction, and professional liability practice he regularly deals with the full suite of contractual issues such as formation, incorporation of terms, interpretation and implication of terms, mistake, frustration, termination; and rescission for misrepresentation, duress, or undue influence.
Benedict studied Commercial Remedies and Restitution of Unjust Enrichment on the BCL (the latter of which he was taught by Lord Burrows of the Supreme Court), and as a Trusts tutor at Oxford he had a particular interest in remedies for breaches of fiduciary duties. His academic background means that he is familiar with issues of equity, trusts, and unjust enrichment that would more typically be encountered in a commercial chancery practice rather than a common law commercial practice; Benedict is comfortable dealing with disputes that straddle this distinction.
Highlights of recent work include:
- Commercial chancery, director’s duties – M W High Tech Projects UK Ltd v Greenhalgh and others – settling the 180-page Defence in this £320,000,000 TCC claim for breach of directors’ duties against three former directors arising out of the Claimant construction company’s entry into three large waste-to-energy plant projects (led by Daniel Shapiro KC and James Sharpe). During pupillage, Benedict also assisted Daniel and James with their skeleton argument for an interim hearing which variously involved applications for summary judgment, strike out, and initial and extended disclosure, and is reported at [2022] EWHC 2000 (TCC);
- Commercial chancery, unjust enrichment, civil fraud – acting in relation to a claim put at £100,000 involving a Seettu, a type of Tamil lending and investment syndicate. Involves allegations of breach of trust and a claim for an account of profits;
- Unjust enrichment – drafting a Defence and Counterclaim in an unjust enrichment and breach of trust claim valued at over £220,000 arising out of a solicitor’s mistaken payment of loan funds under a second mortgage to a homeowner instead of using the intended funds to discharge a first mortgage. Issues included resulting Quistclose trusts, the ‘at the expense of’ element of the unjust enrichment cause of action, and the nature of enrichment;
- Unjust enrichment, recission for undue influence – advising and drafting grounds of appeal in a claim involving the assignment of a lease procured by alleged undue influence. Issues included the availability of damages in recission claims and the requirement to give counter-restitution upon recission;
- Sale of goods – DIPT & Ors v Sanglier; Sanglier v Apollo [2023] EWHC 426 (TCC) assisted Carlo Taczalski and Michael Harper who were successful in this important case which provides guidance on the test for recoverability of losses in the form of sums paid out by way of settlement of claims. Benedict provided research assistance on issues including the enforceability of limitation and exclusion clauses, concurrent causes, and the test for satisfactory quality. The case involved the supply of an allegedly defective adhesive and it hinged upon complex chemistry and materials science expert evidence;
- Sale of goods – drafting a Defence on behalf of a supplier of topsoil and landscape gardening supplies in a claim worth over £130,000 in which it was alleged that the soil was unfit for purpose and of unsatisfactory quality due to it containing glass shards. Involved issues of legal causation and assumption of responsibility given that the damages claimed are over 100x the value of the goods supplied;
- Supply of goods and services – drafted a Defence and Counterclaim on behalf of a supplier of kitchen worksurfaces facing allegations of goods supplied being of unsatisfactory quality and the installation of the same being defective;
- Supply of goods and services – advised on prospects and quantum in a claim involving a drill bit breaking and causing damage to a routing machine used to cut worksurface materials. Remoteness of loss was the central issue in this classic Hadley v Baxendale-type case;
- Contracts for services – drafting a Defence, an Additional Claim, and advising in a contractual dispute between a recruitment agency and a construction company. The recruitment agency had purportedly assigned its rights to payment under the contract to a factoring company, who brought the main claim for unpaid invoices against the construction company. The construction company sought a refund for commission fees it had paid to the recruitment agency. Issues concerned assignment, contractual interpretation, and incorporation of terms;
- Contracts for services, consumer law – acting on behalf of a major national food delivery company in a claim for a refund for undelivered food under the Consumer Rights Act 2015;
- Contracts for services, consumer law – drafting a Defence on behalf of a ‘life coach’ in a dispute concerning a contract to provide ‘life coaching’. Issues included the interaction of certainty of terms and the implication of terms under the CRA 2015;
- Rectification for mistake – advising in relation to a claim for rectification of an agreement to purchase real property in which an incorrect price was inserted into the agreement by the purchaser’s legal representatives;
- PD51U – (during pupillage) assisted Carlo Taczalski in a PD 51U disclosure guidance hearing. Researched the scope and nature of an agent’s duty to disclose documents to the principal following termination of the agency;
- Civil fraud – (during pupillage) assisted Daniel Shapiro KC and Carlo Taczalski in a claim brought by an insured against its broker for fraudulently representing that the insurer had agreed to an indemnity which involved the falsification of various documents. Issues concerned the broker’s vicarious liability for a rogue employee and attribution of the rogue employee’s dishonesty to the brokering firm;
- General commercial, unjust enrichment – drafting the Particulars of Claim in a debt claim arising out of a loan agreement for the purchase of residential property. The existence of the loan agreement, its terms, and the circumstances of its formation were strongly in contention;
- General commercial, interim injunctions – (during pupillage) assisted Jason Evans-Tovey with an interim application for an injunction to prevent a business’ bank accounts from being closed by its bank;
- General commercial – (during pupillage) drafted a Particulars of Claim and Reply and Defence to Counterclaim in a case involving a packaging and logistics company’s claim for the value of reusable storage containers which the Defendant client had hired and seemingly lost.
Selected Cases
View full profile »Awards
- Academic Scholarship, Oriel College (2017-2019)
- Oriel College Prize for Finals results (2019)
- Finalist (top 12 of over 100 essays), Times Law Awards (2020)
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Qualifications
- BA Jurisprudence (Double First, 9/250 in cohort); Oriel College, University of Oxford
- Bachelor of Civil Law (Distinction); Oriel College, University of Oxford
- Bar Vocational Studies (Distinction); City, University of London
