Michal Hain > Twenty Essex > London, England > Barrister Profile
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20 ESSEX STREET
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Michal Hain
Position
Michal’s broad commercial practice is evenly split between English courts and international arbitral tribunals. He acts in general commercial cases with an emphasis on complex multi-jurisdictional litigation. Michal is also experienced in specialised areas, including investor-state disputes, insurance, and insolvency.
In the legal directories, he is described as “superbly gifted and a pleasure to work with”.
Michal is increasingly instructed to act as sole counsel, including in a one-week, high-value Commercial Court trial (Albion v Heritage and another [2022] EWHC 162 (Comm). He also frequently works in larger teams, not least in appellate cases, where he draws on his experiences as a Judicial Assistant to Lord Reed, then Deputy President, and now President of the Supreme Court.
He was recently instructed in two Supreme Court appeals: The CMA CGM LIBRA [2021] UKSC 51 about the proper construction of the Hague Rules and SAS v WPL regarding the jurisdiction of the English court to prevent, by injunction, the enforcement of a foreign judgment that was inconsistent with a prior domestic judgment and inconsistent with domestic public policy (in which the appeal settled).
As a Judicial Assistant at the UKSC in 2018-19, Michal worked on a number of leading commercial cases, including Vedanta [2019] UKSC 20 (jurisdiction in the context of a parent company’s liability for a subsidiary’s torts), Poole BC v GN [2019] UKSC 25 (assumption of responsibility in tort law), and Marex [2020] UKSC 31 (reflective loss rule in company law).
Prior to joining chambers, Michal taught contract and tort law at various Oxford colleges and, whilst at Harvard Law School, worked as a mediator in the Harvard Law School Mediation Programme, as a Student Attorney in the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project, and as a Judicial Intern in the Massachusetts Superior Court.
As a native German and Slovak speaker, Michal can work with original documents in German, Slovak and Czech.
https://www.twentyessex.com/people/michal-hain/
Languages
German (native); Slovak (native); French (conversational)
Lawyer Rankings
London Bar > Shipping
(Rising stars)Ranked: Tier 1Praised for its ‘extremely strong bench strength in the shipping space’, Twenty Essex‘s members are routinely instructed in complex shipping cases at all levels of the English court system as well as internationally. In UK P&I Club v Venezuela, the Court of Appeal in London blocked a claim by the Venezuelan regime, owing to state immunity, in a case after a collision between a navy patrol vessel and a cruise liner; David Lewis KC led Alexander Thompson for the shipowners. A number of the set’s barristers were involved in Frangou v Frangos, which dealt with a contractual dispute between members of a Greek shipping family concerning costs and losses arising out of the operation of a commercial vessel; Oliver Caplin KC led Patrick Dunn-Walsh on the defendant side, while Timothy Hill KC led Andrew Feld for the claimant. Elsewhere, the MSC Flaminia has continued to occupy courts, with Julian Kenny KC leading Michal Hain on behalf of MSC in limitation proceedings in the Court of Appeal, which upheld that charterers cannot limit an owner’s claim for its own losses.
London Bar > Commodities
(Rising stars)Ranked: Tier 1Michal Hain – Twenty Essex ‘Michal is friendly, responsive and has a good understanding of the factual background behind a claim.’