23ES

John Small was called in 2002, and his specialisms are in commercial and employment law and the crossover of the two. Particularly, John specialises in company disputes, shareholder disputes, directors’ duties, unfair prejudice petitions, partnership disputes and post-termination/business protection work including trade secrets, confidential information and passing off.

John is authorised to conduct litigation and accepts direct access instructions.

John’s clients include SMEs, partnerships and solicitors and he prides himself on providing specific, to the point and quick advice to those who instruct him.

John has a formidable reputation as an accomplished trial advocate, and he has built up a significant High Court practice. Recent cases include:

• Instructed by a shareholder to bring an unfair prejudice petition, breach of contract and various torts. Claim involves multiple defendants and involves complex issues of fiduciary duties, conspiracy claims and the Partnership Act 1890.

• Instructed by a joint shareholder and director to defend a complex breach of fiduciary claim. Claim involves multiple allegations and disputes in several different jurisdictions.

• Instructed by a joint shareholder and director to defend a derivative action and breach of fiduciary claim.

• Instructed by the directors of a struck off company to defend them against a liquidator’s claim for wrongful trading.

• Instructed by a CEO of a very-well known trading house in relation to his wrongful dismissal claim and breach of a shareholder’s agreement, in excess of £2m.

• Instructed by a CEO in respect of bonus and share options claims, challenging the applicability of the written terms and dealing with such issues an entire agreement clauses and estoppel.

• Instructed by a CEO to pursue claims in the High Court for breach of contract and wrongful dismissal. Claim worth in excess of £1m. Claim also includes a number of jurisdictional disputes covering a number of companies in several different jurisdictions.

• Instructed by two shareholders in large-scale damages claim for breach of a sales purchase and shareholder agreement.

• Instructed by two senior employees over in defending a freezing injunction and a damages claim for fraud.

In addition to the above John also deals with the full gambit of commercial disputes, property disputes and insolvency matters.

John is a member of COMBAR and the Employment Lawyers Association, and holds a LLM in Commercial Law, where as part of it he studied Private International Law. John has considerable experience is multi-jurisdictional claims and looks forward to continuing with this area of work.