St Philips Chambers

Business & Property

John has a broad based practice in chancery and commercial law, acting in a wide range of work including contractual, property and professional negligence disputes, together with commercially related judicial review claims and a variety of sports law matters. He is an accredited mediator and was a deputy High Court Judge for 16 years. John has acted in a substantial number of lengthy trials and high value claims, including: ten lead cases in a group action for professional negligence, tried in the Chancery Division in Birmingham over seven weeks; and Queen’s Bench proceedings on behalf of a substantial Building Society seeking to recover losses of over £50 million from MIG and pool insurers in respect of post-property crash defaults and capital losses. His experience includes two major trials involving the extensive use of computers in the court room during the hearing, numerous appeal cases, and a number of remote video hearings. John is an Adjunct Professor at the University of New South Wales law school in Sydney, and has taught both there and at the University of Melbourne on its Law Masters programme. He is also a frequent speaker at legal seminars in the United Kingdom. John’s international experience includes appearances in the Court of Appeal of Tanzania, the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands, and the High Court of Justice of the Isle of Man (both Civil and Staff of Government Divisions), and providing expert evidence of English law for Courts in Spain and Eire. He has received two ‘Barrister of the Year’ awards. Visit John's personal website at www.johnrandallkc.co.uk.

Called 1978, Lincoln’s Inn; silk 1995; deputy high court judge, Chancery and Queen’s Bench Divisions, 2000-2016; Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn, 2003; external examiner, Bar professional training course 2008-2015; member, Legal Services Consultative Panel 2000-09; Adjunct Professor, University of New South Wales 2013 (Visiting Fellow 2004-2013); Senior Fellow, University of Melbourne 2014-17. Publications of note: The Tort of Conversion (with Sarah Green), 2009 (Hart Publishing, Oxford) – finalist in the triennial Inner Temple Book Prize (2011); ‘Rethinking the Economic Torts’ (with Prof Simon Deakin) (2009) 72 Modern Law Review 519; ‘Caparo v Dickman – Legal Celebrity or Jurisprudential Substance?’, in Cases that Changed our Lives, 2010 (LexisNexis Butterworths, London); ‘Proprietary estoppel and the common intention constructive trust – Strange bedfellows or a match in the making?’ (2010) 4 Journal of Equity 171; ‘Detinue, Trover & Conversion’ (with Prof Brendan Edgeworth) in Historical Foundations of Australian Law – Volume II, Commercial Common Law (Federation Press, Sydney, 2013); ‘Express Termination Clauses in Contracts’ [2014] Cambridge Law Journal 113; ‘When Louisa Carlill Caught the Flu – Carlill v The Carbolic Smoke Ball Co’, in Cases that Changed our Lives 2, 2014 (LexisNexis Butterworths, London); ‘Criminal Convictions in the Civil Courts’ (with Matthew Dyson) [2015] Cambridge Law Journal 78; ‘England’s Splendid Isolation’ (with Matthew Dyson) in Comparing Crime and Tort (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Midland Circuit; Chancery Bar Association; COMBAR; Midland Chancery and Commercial Bar Association (MCCBA); Society of Legal Scholars.

Jesus College, Cambridge (1977 BA (Hons) 2(1); 1981 MA); barrister of New South Wales (1979); barrister and solicitor of Western Australia (2001).