Iain Goldrein KC > Chambers of Richard Pratt KC > Liverpool, England > Barrister Profile

Practice Areas

Civil

• Privacy and the Media – injunctive and “super” injunctive relief;
• Pre-emptive commercial remedies including freezing and seizing orders/injunctions;
• Insurance disputes;
• Engineering issues;
• Product liability including pharmaceutical product liability and blood products;
• Acted for directors of a major airline on an issue of alleged secret profits;
• Professional [including solicitors’] negligence;
• Liability for injuries sustained during competitive sport;
• Alder Hey Body Parts Enquiry – acting for 400+ parents [Redfern QC was Chair to the Enquiry];
• Acted for estate developer in the context of the failed foundations to a large housing estate;
• The law relating to lottery syndicates;
• Clinical negligence [particularly brain damage at birth/ cerebral palsy and any issue arising from genetics] and catastrophic injury claims [brain and spinal cord]. In this arena, he has a wide knowledge and experience of medical matters, medical expert evidence and the welfare issues that flow from catastrophic injury at all ages [e.g. adult social care].
• False imprisonment, malicious prosecution and misfeasance in public office;
• The regulatory framework for e-commerce/ e-gaming and crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin [participation in the Crypto Valley Summit on the Isle of Man in September 2014, [which was introduced by the Lieutenant Governor].
• The regulatory framework for the extraction of shale gas.

Crime

• Representation of the People Act [election fraud]
• His successfully prosecuting one of the earliest cases involving computerised telephone evidence. [R v Shacklady, one of the largest prosecutions brought by Preston CPS]
• He has a special expertise in relation to covert surveillance and phonetic interpretation, and he has developed a practice protocol for covert surveillance evidence. [R v Albattikhi , one of the largest and highest profile cases outside London in 2007/8; acquittal].
• He has defended a case where the central witness for the prosecution was anonymous [under the 2008 legislation];
• He successfully overcame a phalanx of pathology evidence ranged against him in a manslaugter prosecution against a club bouncer [drawing on his forensic medical experience];
• He has a broad experience of human rights issues [including in the Court of Appeal];
• Complex issues of ballistic evidence and DNA [he has a particular expertise in genetics]
• Confiscation and Proceeds of Crime, recovering for example over £2m in the Shacklady case.
• He deployed his expertise in child psychology [harvested from practice in the Family Division] successfully to defend an uncle charged as being part of a paedophile ring.
• He has a particular expertise in non-accidental head injury to babies, again harmonising his experience of the Crown Court and the Family Division.
• He challenged the telephone statistical evidence in one of the largest cases prosecuted by Avon and Somerset for 15 years [R v Wall and others] securing an acquittal where his client was charged with conspiracy to murder, the telephone evidence being held out by the prosecution as pointing to his client as the focal point of the 9-hander conspiracy.
• Lead cases in the Court of Appeal as to joint enterprise, and SOCPA agreements.

Family

• Human Rights;
• Genetics (including human rights);
• Surrogacy;
• Human Fertilisation and Embryology;
• Public Law cases with a foreign element, [“Brussels II Revised” including Article 15 applications];
• Sudden Infant Death Syndrome;
• Muslim circumcision;
• Proceedings under the Forced Marriage Act;
• Schedule 1 Children Act claims [property and maintenance];
• Media Access to the Family Courts and Reporting Restriction Orders;
• Factitious Induced Injury [FII “Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy”]
• International child abduction;
• Non – accidental head injury [NAHI];
• Wardship post – Children Act;
• Inter-action of insolvency, divorce and the matrimonial home.
• International adoption

Commitment to Diversity and Equality of Opportunity

The following bibliography expresses legal principle through the prism of procedure and litigation technique [the Managing Director {Neville Cusworth} of Butterworths in the 1980s said it “broke the mould of legal publishing”]. The agenda was, and is, to secure equality of opportunity in litigation and a level playing field for all irrespective of race, gender, wealth, colour or creed].

The Bibliography

Recent Publications:

Commercial Litigation Ð Pre-Emptive Remedies: International Edition [General Editor: 2005 and 2nd edition January 2012, with a Foreword by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers].

Ship Sale and Purchase: [Forewords by Lords Justice Steyn, Anthony Evans, Rix and Lord Mance]. Lloyds of London Press/Informa: 1985; 6^th Ed August 2012 with Clyde and Co. From the first edition, IG explored the needs of diverse stakeholders in the  market throughout the world [irrespective of background etc] also to inform them in a legal context. It has been a market leader worldwide for over 30 years. This work has been formally translated into Chinese, with official approval from IGs London publishers. The initiative for such translation came from Beijing. In this context, IG was invited to the launch of the Manchester China Institute.

Insurance Disputes [Informa; 1999 & 2003 & 3rd edition January 2012, with Lord Mance, Prof. Merkin and sub-editors, seeking to advance a genuine integrity and transparency in the conduct of insurance litigation and to enable litigators, irrespective of background, to achieve best practice];

PROCEDURAL LAW:

Bullen and Leake and Jacob: Precedents of Pleadings 13th ed [Foreword by Lord Griffiths. 1990, with Co-Editor in Chief with Sir Jack Jacob; and sub-eds].

Pleadings: Principles and Practice [Foreword by Lord Goff. 1990, with Sir Jack Jacob. The work includes perspectives from diverse jurisdictions [Scotland, France and Germany] to broaden and enrich the context;

PERSONAL INJURY:

Personal Injury Litigation: Practice And Precedents [Butterworths, 1985] with Margaret de Haas and District Judge Wilkinson;

Butterworths Personal Injury Litigation Service with Margaret de Haas and a team; [Forewords by Lord Justice Russell and Lord Woolf BPILS-1988, now in 6 volumes, loose-leaf with sub-eds [now up to supplement 156]; this book is the vehicle through which IG pioneered and promulgated the techniques he had developed in practice further to secure equality and diversity. It has proved to be one of the most successful books in the publishers history];

*Structured Settlements with Margaret de Haas and a team; [Foreword by Mr. Justice Michael Wright. Butterworths, 1993&1996 with sub-eds; manuscript to 1st ed. contracted to be delivered in 8 weeks {as it was} when Butterworths had advertised the book but the previous authors had failed to deliver. It was a new field of procedure, which required best practice for the average high street litigator];

COMMERCE:

Commercial Litigation: Pre-Emptive Remedies with a team [Forewords by Lord Justice Donaldson MR, Lord Woolf MR [x2] and Lord Phillips MR.1987 Sweet and Maxwell; now loose-leaf with sub-eds. This work synthesized over a dozen fields of commercial law to create a compendium, drawing upon fundamental principles common to each field, and was intended to enable litigators from every background to litigate with the best in this field].

FAMILY LAW:

Child Case Management Practice [Jordan 2009 and 2012: With Ryder J and sub-editors]. There is a third edition of this book due out in late 2017.

Media Access to the Family Courts: [Jordans 2009]

Template for a Model Judgment [Family Division work] published by Jordans as a feature in Family Law February 2014.

HONG KONG:

Bullen and Leake and Jacob [Precedents of Pleadings] 2014: Supervisory Editor Ð there are several other contributing editors for this book.

Hong Kong Commercial Litigation: December 2012 – Consulting Editor Ð again, there are several other contributing editors to this book.

GENETICS:

IG has been exploring the inter-face between law and genetics since 1999, and has sought to pioneer this field of jurisprudence as being central to issues of privacy and personal autonomy, particularly in an Article 8 context:

• Editor: Genetics Law Monitor [2000-2003] Informa Press.
• Editor-in-Chief: Coram Genetics Law Journal [published by IGs London chambers).

This has to be seen also in the context of IGs Professorial Chair at University.

Assistance to Lord Chancellor’s Department and Ministry of Justice vis a vis Diversity etc

Judicial Shadowing:

• In 1999 Iain Goldrein responded to a request from Lord Irvine LC as to equality and diversity by volunteering what is now the Judicial Shadowing Scheme [JSS].
• His concept was to advance equality of opportunity and respect for diversity by giving ethnic minorities a stake-holding in the administration of justice, and enable such minorities to secure respect, through their being immediately identified [by sitting alongside the judiciary] with the judicial process.

“Woolf” reforms: In 1994 Iain Goldrein accepted an invitation to assist Lord Woolf on his Report/CPR, flowing from Lord Woolf reading Iain Goldrein’s Inaugural Professorial Paper [ibid]. This resulted in frequent liaison [1995-1998] with Amanda Finlay and Michael Kron at the LCD [Lord Chancellor’s Department; Selborne House].

Expert Evidence: In September 2010, Iain Goldrein was asked to advise the MoJ in Petty France, London, as to how to achieve more cost-effective use of expert evidence in family proceedings and in the course of such advice, he proposed extending the Judicial Shadowing Scheme to embrace experts, to achieve greater opportunity for all experts irrespective of race, sex, colour or creed.

Lecturing Etc

• Experience of people: He has extensive experience of chairing and lecturing for major national conferences [including for the Law Society and Bar Council] affording a very wide experience of people. His audiences have ranged from several hundred to small syndicate groups.
• Training of solicitor advocates: At the invitation of the national Law Society, he assisted in training the first tranche of Higher Court Advocates.
• Hong Kong: In Hong Kong he has lectured to several hundred litigators and academics on their new CPR Code [2009] with particular reference to equality and a level playing field. Lloyds List in September 2009 published a feature about his work via a vis the HK CPR and ADR.