John Ratledge > Chambers of Frances Heaton KC and Richard Norton > Manchester, England > Barrister Profile

John Ratledge

0161 214 1500 clerk@stjohnsbuildings.co.uk View profile

Work Department

Employment, Clinical Negligence, Personal Injury

Position

John has an established employment practice focusing principally on unfair dismissal, discrimination and whistleblowing at ET and EAT level.

Commercial clients include both private enterprises and PLCs.

John is an experienced personal injury specialist and accepts instructions in a broad range of Multi-track injury matters (road traffic, work accidents and public liability claims) but has become best known for motor fraud cases, including fraud rings, staged accidents, those that never happened, and bogus passenger claims. He is the preferred counsel for a number of large insurers in this area. Credit hire is also a topic regularly covered in John’s road traffic practice.

John’s employers’ liability practice covers spinal and subtle brain injury, for claimants and defendants, as well as the full range of more prosaic work-related injury, for example lifting and falling. He has also provided advice and representation in industrial disease claims for over a decade (deafness, asbestos, respiratory conditions, skin disorders and upper limb conditions/RSI). All aspects of these claims are handled from pre-litigation advice through to CCMCs, trial and costs.

Public liability claims have recently included fireworks display burns, animal bites and crushes, ice slipping accidents, product liability matters and school claims.

Career

John read law at St John’s College, Cambridge then completed pupillage in these Chambers in 2000. Since then he has worked tirelessly for clients in the areas of injury and employment in the North West and beyond. After 16 years at St John’s Buildings and five years on the South Eastern Circuit in East Anglia, he now returns to St John’s Buildings to continue in his core areas of specialism.