Recent years have seen a significant rise in pensions and trust fund litigation. Pensions have a very high political, business and media profile, with pensions-related stories rarely out of the news. They remain near the top of the boardroom agenda and play a significant role in corporate transactions.
Pensions litigation requires top level expertise; the law in this area is highly complex, the sums involved often run to tens or hundreds of millions of pounds, and disputes can affect the lives of thousands of people in the most fundamental of ways. Our specialist pensions dispute resolution experience allows us to add real value in this field. When disputes arise we are able to service our clients with a team of people who are specialist litigators with a true understanding of the complexities of pensions law.
Our pedigree in this area is of long standing. The practice is one of the oldest in the contentious pensions field and we have been involved in many high profile landmark cases including:
- Maxwell (fraud)
- British Coal (surplus)
- H F Pension Trustees v Ellison (professional negligence)
- National Power/National Grid (surplus)
- Barclays Bank v Holmes (scheme design)
- Capital Cranfield v Pinsent Curtis (professional negligence)
- GEC Plan/Telent (conflict of interest)
- Equitable Life (misselling)
Our long history dealing with pensions disputes gives us the in-depth experience necessary to offer real advantages to our clients in terms of the quality of advice and service they receive and its cost-effectiveness.
Private trust disputes
We also have significant experience of acting for clients in relation to private trust disputes of all kinds, including offshore trust disputes. We act for trustees, beneficiaries and professionals in this area and our experience includes:
Acting for beneficiaries in a number of substantial offshore disputes.
- Defending trustees (including professional trustees) from breach of trust claims, raising, amongst other things, allegations of dishonesty, exoneration clauses and breach of investment duties (for example, Walker v Stones [2001] QB 902).
- Acting for minors and litigation friends.
- Defending directors of corporate trust from direct claims (Gregson v HAE Trustees [2008] All ER (D) 105).