Amy Bennett is a Clinical (Medical) Negligence Solicitor at Duncan Lewis Solicitors, based at the firms' City of London office. Amy has worked exclusively in the field of medical negligence since qualifying as a solicitor over ten years ago. She has special expertise in stillbirth and neonatal death claims and has a genuine and passionate desire to assist parents through the litigation process after the loss of their child. In addition to her in-depth knowledge and expertise in stillbirth and neonatal death claims, Amy handles a number of additional medical negligence matters including childbirth injury claims; gynaecological related claims; and misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis claims. She assists clients who have suffered negligence as a result of surgical errors and errors involving prescriptions, and also assists those who have suffered from pressure sores. Amy's work extends to representing families in negligence claims involving children, and in claims where a wrongful death has occurred.
Duncan Lewis Solicitors
Lawyers
Angela is a Director at Duncan Lewis Soliciotors in the Court of Protection and Public Law departments. Angela act for clients in all aspects of litigation in both the welfare and property/affairs jurisdiction of the Court of Protection. She has a particular interest in acting for family members in both section 16 and section 21A applications where there has been the removal of a family member to a specialist facility or care home at the objection of P’s family. Angela has successfully challenged capacity assessments and deprivation of liberty orders. She also acts for the Official Solicitor on behalf of P in a range of applications. Angela's property and affairs work involves acting for individuals and family members in disputes about capacity, validity of Lasting Power of Attorneys and related revocation applications arising from suitability disputes and financial abuse. She have been involved in a number of high value cases where funds have been managed by deputies including family members, solicitors and local authority officers.
Housing director Bernadette Chikwe specialises in all aspects of housing litigation and tenant/landlord social housing matters. She has copious experience in both dealing with privately rented, local authority and social landlords rent and other grounds possession proceedings. She also has experience in dealing with mortgage possession proceedings, charging order proceedings and assisting clients make their applications to suspend warrants of eviction. Bernadette has worked in a number of reported cases including the recent Abdi v the London Borough of Waltham Forest an s.204 appeal, on the issue of suitability of temporary accommodation of time and distance in the context of borough placements and the post Localism Act. She has been a duty solicitor since 2002 at both Bow County Court and the Central London County Court. As a duty solicitor, she gives clients face to face advice before and after their hearings. She liaises with third parties, represents them in relation to their hearings and when appropriate, makes referrals to other organisations following the hearing. Bernadette also supervises a remote advice service through the Legal Aid Agency Civil Legal Advice. This entails representing clients UK-wide, handling their instructions and processing their cases remotely through non face to face communications such as video calls, telephone and/or email.
David Head is a civil litigation director and is a member of Duncan Lewis Solicitors’ senior management team. He is a housing and litigation solicitor with over 20 years’ experience working throughout London, with significant experience in homelessness, disrepair and possession cases. As a Solicitor Advocate, David has experience in representing clients in the higher courts. He advises on numerous matters which have a cross-over with employment for companies, including TUPE; mergers and acquisitions and employment contractual drafting.
Child care director Emine Mehmet has extensive experience in all aspects of child care and family law. She specialises in representing parents, children’s guardians and children in all Children Act matters, particularly in cases involving abuse, drug/alcohol misuse, neglect, rare illness and non-accidental injuries. Her caseload also comprises of a broad range of privately and publicly funded family and childcare matters, including; care proceedings; private law children disputes; domestic abuse matters; divorce and ancillary relief and cohabitation disputes. Emine Mehmet is committed to assisting the most vulnerable and ensuring access to justice. She is head of the Duncan Lewis Pro bono Committee which has received a number of national industry awards in recognition for its excellent work. She won the Jordan’s Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year at the 2016 Family Law Awards and was commended in the category; Best Contribution by an Individual at the 2017 LawWorks Pro Bono Awards.
Forida is a director in the family and child care department at Duncan Lewis Solicitors. She represents parents, guardians and children within public law proceedings and is well equipped to represent vulnerable parents and children who are subject to removal. She regularly represents clients in domestic abuse, defended and undefended divorces, and financial matrimonial matters as well as assisting clients in private children matters. Forida has extensive experience in representing vulnerable clients in matters that include; non-accidental injuries, sexual abuse, mental health difficulties, and drug and alcohol abuse. She assists parents and Local Authorities in relation to discharging care orders and adoption orders. Recently, she represented a child in a radicalisation case and is well-equipped to advise parents in similar cases in the High Court. Forida undertakes many private law proceedings relating to arrangements for contact and deciding which parent a child should live with. These include complex alienation, implacable hostility, sexual abuse based, protracted contact dispute and domestic abuse cases. She also represents parties in relation to removal from the jurisdiction and child abduction matters.Utilising her expert knowledge and cultural background Forida understands and appreciates the cultural difficulties faced by vulnerable people within the community and assists them accordingly. She provides advice and assistance at the pro bono clinic in the East London Mosque and at Newham Asian Women’s Project, and regularly represents parties as Applicant and Respondent in relation to injunction and forced marriage act orders.
Director Gabor Nagy has a broad practice across all areas of private and publically funded immigration, asylum, and public law matters. He has extensive experience in representing clients in detained and port removal cases, EEA applications, citizenship and naturalisation, and immigration or civil liberties related judicial review claimant cases. He regularly challenges decisions by judicial review to the High Court. Gabor undertakes his own advocacy at the First-tier and Upper Tribunal of the Immigration Asylum Chamber. Gabor is committed to protecting the human rights of the most vulnerable. In 2015 he successfully led Duncan Lewis’ Hungarian fact finding mission where he closely worked with a number of Hungarian based NGOs, social workers, lawyers and detainees. They obtained a thorough and comprehensive insight into the detention regime of the Hungarian government and the information and documents that they gathered became an invaluable asset in Duncan Lewis Solicitors’ subsequent Hungarian human rights based judicial review cases.
Graeme is the director of the Action Against Public Authorities department at Duncan Lewis Solicitors. His driving force is in holding public authorities to account when they abuse their powers, fail to observe their professional obligations, or otherwise act unlawfully. He assists a wide variety of clients, many of whom are vulnerable individuals. His work includes making complaints and bringing civil claims against police, the prison service, various government departments, and their agencies. He also advises in relation to the mishandling of personal information, discrimination, and breaches of legislation designed to protect basic human rights. Graeme also has experience in representing the bereaved during inquests. In addition to his work challenging the actions of public authorities, Graeme is also a solicitor within Duncan Lewis’ criminal defence department and has conducted numerous successful trials throughout his career. In order to maintain a balance between his civil and criminal litigation caseloads, Graeme takes care to preserve his duty solicitor status, and regularly attends both court and police stations to ensure that those who request his assistance are properly represented, advised and defended.
Director Hardeep is a specialist in criminal fraud defence work and has a significant practice in high-value DWP benefit fraud, MTIC VAT fraud, and complex boiler room and money laundering cases. He defends cases investigated and prosecuted by the National Crime Agency, HMRC, the Serious Fraud Office, UK Borders Agency, Economic Crime Units, the DWP, local authorities and Trading Standards. Hardeep also handles defence work in high-profile (often gang-related) serious crimes such as murders, drug importation, fraud and rape. He has a niche specialism in defending bank employee fraud cases (with holistic assistance from the firm’s welfare benefits legal team). Hardeep has further expanded his role by ensuring the firm is recognised as leaders in representing clients charged with very serious high profile offences which are only triable at the Crown Court. This includes high value complex fraud cases and large scale drug importation cases.Hardeep’s notable cases include R v W, a money laundering case involving money in excess of £100,000, and the case of R v O which involved the alleged large-scale importation of cannabis into the UK from the Netherlands and was investigated by the National Crime Agency.
Public law director, James Packer, litigates across a broad range of areas and regularly conducts test cases concerning issues that involve; access to the courts, unlawful detention, enforced removals from the UK, challenges to decisions to refuse legal aid and associated litigation. He also has a specialist practice in complex immigration cases, especially for high net worth and high profile individuals and is frequently involved in appealing costs decisions, often to the Court of Appeal. James has extensive experience in cases which have been decided in the Administrative Court, Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. He has also brought successful challenges to the European Court of Human Rights. He also handles tribunal advocacy work and has a significant practice in Upper Tribunal and Court of Appeal cases.In a judicial review against the Lord Chancellor, James was part of the team at Duncan Lewis that successfully challenged the blanket refusal to provide legal aid funding for judicial reviews where permission was refused on the papers. The result will assist legal aid providers representing some of the most vulnerable in society and should in turn enhance access to justice. James has experience in a wide variety of judicial review litigation including; a challenge to a decision to impose a planning levy on a development; challenges to decisions by the Secretary of State for Justice to recall prisoners released on licence; challenges to the continuation of police bail, and a successful challenge to a decision by the SRA to simply send a ‘letter of advice’ to his client’s former solicitor. James also handled a challenge to the removal of a parking place for a disabled self-employed person, a challenge to a refusal to amend a Statement of Special Educational Needs, and challenges to local authority assessments such as housing and social security entitlements of various types. James provides accredited training for ILPA, HJT and AMT.
Immigration director, Jenna McKinney, has extensive experience specialising in all aspects of immigration, European Economic Area (EEA) law, asylum, and human rights. She leads a team that specialises in representing detainees with their immigration and public law matters; specifically, appeals, asylum, general immigration, challenges against removal or deportation and unlawful detention judicial review claimant work in the High Court. She also represents in civil claims in the county courts and the Queen’s Bench Division.Jenna attends attend prisons and immigration detention/removal centres throughout England and Wales and regularly assists clients with applying for bail, release and those facing deportation.She has considerable expertise in unlawful detention judicial review claimant matters and has a significant practice in unlawful immigration detention cases with high net claims for damages and challenging immigration removal cases; in particular, Dublin II third country removal cases. Jenna conducts her own advocacy, representing clients at hearings before the First-tier and Upper Tribunal of the Immigration Asylum Chamber. She is a legal aid specialist, representing vulnerable clients, including: minors; vulnerable women who have been raped; those with mental health issues, and those with medical issues including people living with HIV.She has also been involved in numerous complex cases that settled out of court including MO v SSHD in which MO was one of the claimants in the test litigation of Medical Justice V SSHD, Equality and Human Rights Commission intervening [2017] EWHC 2461 (Admin) which held that the Home Office had applied an incorrect definition of torture to immigration detainees and challenged the Adults at Risk Home Office statutory guidance for immigration detainees.Jenna regularly provides training on challenging immigration detention. She has previously assisted the charity Detention Action in their litigation challenging the Detained Fast Track by providing expert witness evidence and case studies on behalf of Duncan Lewis Solicitors. This evidence was extensively referred to by the Court in the judgement declaring the Detained Fast Track Process unlawful in 2014.
Personal injury director, Julie Leslie, has over 14 years' post-qualification experience across all types of claimant personal injury work. This includes accidents at work, trips and slips, occupier's liability, children's injuries and road traffic accidents. Julie has experience in running cases from initiation through to trial. Her caseload varies from representing claimants with straightforward injuries, to those where claimants have suffered life changing accidents.
Family and child care director, Laila Bhunnoo, is a solicitor-advocate and specialises in representing parents, children’s guardians, and children in all Children Act matters. She has a wide practice assisting publically funded clients across London. Her practice covers special guardianship orders, care orders, supervision orders, emergency protection orders, UK and international adoption, child abduction, forced marriage protection orders, and FGM orders. Laila’s work also covers matters that involve same sex relationships, and she has significant experience representing vulnerable teenagers, often separately from their Guardian when conflict has arisen.Laila is a member of the Law Society’s Children Panel as a Children Representative and is an experienced advocate with Higher Rights of Audience, which entitles her to represent clients at all levels of court. She is repeatedly the ‘solicitor of choice’ for Children Guardians in connection with Rule 16.4 appointments. Being one of the few Asian specialists in this area, Laila is also often appointed in culturally complex cases. Laila was awarded Employer of the Year 2011 and 2016 by the National Mentoring Consortium for her work with the University of Westminster law students; mentoring BME university students to help them achieve a better understanding of the work place and developing their skills through increasing confidence in their own abilities.
Olivia Amy Rose is a Consultant Solicitor within the Crime department at Duncan Lewis Solicitors. Amy joined Duncan Lewis in 2020 after qualifying as a Solicitor in 2019. She is Police Station Accredited and has Higher Rights meaning that she can represent clients at all stages of their criminal proceedings. Amy has a broad range of experience with all criminal matters dealing with everything from minor driving offences to allegations of murder.
Shabana Masood is a solicitor in the personal injury and litigation department at Duncan Lewis’ Dalston and Harrow office. Shabana regularly handles different types of serious injury claims, including brain injuries, orthopaedic, amputations and others involving catastrophic and life-changing injuries caused by accidents at work and road traffic accidents. Having acted in a wide range of litigation matters such as landlord and tenant disputes, debt recovery, professional negligence and enforcement to bankruptcy, she is passionate about achieving the best possible outcome for her clients.
Sophie Fretten is a director in the family and child care departments at Duncan Lewis Solicitors and has extensive experience in both public and private law children matters. She supervises a team of solicitors, trainees and paralegals who share her commitment and dedication to this very sensitive and important area of law. In relation to public law matters, Sophie handles cases that involve care proceedings, adoption, applications to discharge care orders, special guardianship orders and revocation of placement orders. She frequently acts for vulnerable parents including those with mental health issues, learning difficulties, young parents as well as interveners and parents in non-accidental injury matters. Additionally, she represents grandparents and other relatives that may require representation in such cases. Sophie undertakes private law children matters including contact and residence disputes along with domestic violence matters. She also undertakes her own advocacy at Court.
Vanket is a director in the family and childcare department at Duncan Lewis Solicitors. Vanket litigates across all areas of family law including divorce, ancillary relief, care proceedings, TOLATA (Trust of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act), and domestic abuse. His specialities include financial claims, Schedule 1 applications, private law children and child abduction matters. He has acted on behalf of applicants in child abductions matters and also for respondents, and has successfully defended several applications for the return of children to the countries they were removed from. He has also represented respondents in successfully challenging forced marriage applications. His notable cases include N’Suka Along in the case of Along v Mwanga. In relation to financial claims, Vanket has successfully set aside equitable charges by third parties and resisted warrant for possessions brought by mortgagees where the matrimonial homes were under the sole names of respondent spouses who failed to pay the mortgages.