Gemma Witherington

Professional Liability

Legal Professionals

Gemma acts for both claimants and defendants and has an excellent track record in achieving highly desirable outcomes. She acts for a wide range of professional bodies, insurers, and individuals. She is highly experienced in handling high value claims against solicitors and Barristers involving limitation issues, under-settlement, negligent assessment of the merits of a case, capacity issues and procedural default.

She has also dealt with cases involving family or matrimonial issues. Gemma sits as a Recorder with tickets in both private and public family work, and so has solid experience of such issues. She also has excellent working knowledge of the CPR and matters such as relief form sanctions application or failed appeals.

She has been instructed on more novel issues related to professional negligence matters such as contempt of court and wasted costs applications, and applications made directly against insurers.

She is experienced in dealing with issues of apportionment where claims are brought against multiple solicitors’ firms and counsel, and where there are causation arguments about the potency of breaches of duty.

Her experience covers areas such as negligent advice in respect of possessions, mortgages, leases, forfeiture, and contracts and employment disputes in the Tribunal.

Many of the cases Gemma is instructed in are highly confidential and therefore cannot be stated here.  She is presently instructed to represent a high-profile personal injury silk against a high value and complex negligence claim (2021), and the case is ongoing.

She is also representing several large international law firms against claims in negligence (2021). In 2020, she acted for a law firm and successfully defended a wasted costs application against the firm and individual solicitors.

Further recent work:

• Andrew Withey v Associate Law Firm and others (2021), representing the Defendant law firm in a claim where it is alleged the Claimant’s personal injury claim was badly handled and struck out and there was a failure to make a relief from sanctions application. There are issues of apportionment between two solicitors’ firms who had acted on the case before it was struck out.
• Horton v Wright Hassall, Gemma was instructed for the Defendants in a claim alleging negligent advice related to high value property transactions. The Claim was struck out early on in the proceedings and a successful costs award achieved in favour of the Defendant.
• Slater and Slater v Steels Law Ltd – successful early settlement of a claim against former solicitors who had negligently advised the Claimant in respect of the purchase of their property, which ought to have been their dream home. However, the solicitor searches failed to establish a 500+ housing site being built behind it.
• Instructed in a multimillion-pound claim, where both solicitors and counsel are alleged to have undervalued a catastrophic injury claim.
• Represented an insurer in respect of a solicitor’s firm’s failure to issue a claim in time resulting in the claim being statue barred.
• Instructed by an insurer to defend a claim where a solicitor’s firm had failed to issue an application for relief from sanctions, which resulted in the claim being struck out.

Selected Cases

Articles

• Lessons for Universities: the Appeal in Abrahart
• E-Scooters to be legalised for private use on public roads

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News

• Gemma Witherington: The Times Lawyer of the Week
• Gemma Witherington successful in establishing that a university owes a duty of care towards their students when making sexual assault claims against a fellow student

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Qualifications

• BA (Hons)
• PgdDip
• BVC: Very competent
• Inner Temple Exhibition Award 2007-2008
• Streuben Benefactor Award 2007- 2008

Memberships

• The Honourable Society of Inner Temple
• Personal Injury Bar Association
• Association of Personal Injury Lawyers