James Gardner > Twenty Essex > London, England > Barrister Profile

Position

James has a diverse commercial practice with a particular focus on banking, shipping, international trade, trade finance, civil fraud, energy and companies. He is regularly instructed alone or as part of a team in the High Court, most commonly the Commercial Court, as well as in arbitrations conducted under various institutional rules and ad hoc.

James has experience of high value, complex litigation. He has recently acted for an international bank in a US$16 million Commercial Court trade finance dispute (led by Andrew Fulton QC), a Chinese trading house claiming US$157 million for undelivered iron ore in two related LCIA arbitrations (led by Simon Milnes), and a marine desulphurisation unit manufacturer facing a multi-million dollar claim under an agency agreement in an ad hoc arbitration (led by Simon Milnes).

James also regularly acts as sole counsel, as he did for the respondents in Daly v Ryan [2021] EWHC 976 (Ch), a successful application for an order imposing conditions on the appellants’ permission to appeal against an €8.5 million judgment debt in a fraud claim.

James has experience of applications for emergency relief (particularly freezing injunctions), disclosure applications (including under the Hague Convention on the Taking of Evidence Abroad in Civil or Commercial Matters) and enforcement procedures (such as debtor examinations, contested applications for charging orders, third party debt orders and to enforce arbitral awards). He is especially familiar with making and resisting such applications against the background of allegations of fraud, having spent six months on secondment at a civil fraud litigation boutique in his first year of practice.

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