Jimmy Barber > Chambers of Matthew White > Bristol, England > Barrister Profile
St John's Chambers Offices
St John's Chambers
101 VICTORIA STREET
BRISTOL
BS1 6PU
England
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Jimmy Barber
Work Department
Jimmy is a specialist practitioner in the fields of clinical negligence, personal injury and industrial disease. He joined St John’s Chambers in September 2015 having previously practised in London.
Career
Call : 2008
Jimmy is a specialist practitioner in the fields of clinical negligence, personal injury and industrial disease. He joined St John’s Chambers in September 2015 having previously practised in London.
In clinical negligence, Jimmy has experience of cases involving a wide array of areas of medicine and dentistry and acts for healthcare providers, clinicians and claimants. He regularly advises on and settles pleadings in cases involving delays in diagnosis, injuries caused by or in the course of surgery and failure to obtain proper consent.
In his personal injury practice, Jimmy is often instructed on behalf of local authorities and public bodies in defending highways and occupiers’ liability claims. He regularly defends personal injury claims involving allegations of fraud, exaggeration and fundamental dishonesty. He has significant experience in industrial disease claims and employers’ liability claims, in particular in claims involving noise-induced hearing loss and non-freezing cold injuries brought by military personnel. He was led by Andrew McLaughlin in successfully opposing the appeal in Stewart v Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Trust [2017] EWCA Civ 2091, having defended the NHS Trust as sole counsel at first instance.
Jimmy is adept at dealing with cases involving complex and technical issues. He has a particular interest in civil procedure, on various aspects of which he has given talks and seminars.
Prior to specializing in clinical negligence and personal injury, Jimmy developed his advocacy skills and legal knowledge practising in a range of common law and commercial work. He prosecuted and defended in the Crown Court and magistrates’ courts and regularly appeared before the Employment Tribunal. He has spent periods working in-house at HMRC, the Government Legal Department and the Ministry of Health. For two terms he was the judicial assistant to Lord Thomas (who was at the time President of the Queen’s Bench Division), working at the Civil Appeals Office at the Royal Courts of Justice.
Memberships
- Personal Injury Bar Association
Education
- LLB European (Magister), University of Exeter (First Class)
- LLM, University of the Saarland (First Class)
- Bachelor of Civil Law, University of Oxford
- Lord Denning Scholarship & Hardwicke Entrance Award, Lincoln’s Inn
- Undergraduate prizes including the Cavendish Prize, DLA European Law Prize, Markus Zalewski Prize and School of Law Commendation
Lawyer Rankings
Regional Bar > Western Circuit > Personal injury
(Leading Juniors)Ranked: Tier 3Jimmy Barber – St John’s Chambers ‘Jimmy is wise beyond his years and call and is exceptionally detailed and thorough in the advice that he gives. He very quickly sees the issues in a case and his advocacy skills are second to none.’
St John’s Chambers is ‘an impressive set with a number of high-quality barristers’, praised by some as ‘the strongest set in the South West for claimant personal injury litigation’. Christopher Sharp KC handles medically and legally complex claims, often involving catastrophic brain and spinal injuries, for both claimants and defendants, while Andrew McLaughlin, a ‘tenacious advocate with vast experience’, represents insurers in high-value, multi-track claims. In Jenkinson v Robertson, Matthew White, ‘a master of fine detail’, represented a claimant in his appeal against an initial finding that he had been fundamentally dishonest in his claim following a road traffic accident. Jimmy Barber, ‘excellent at getting to the important issues in a case‘, specialises in claims involving accidents abroad, hearing loss, asthma, freezing injuries, and chronic pain, as well as in cases with complicating procedural issues.