Twenty Essex

Michal’s broad commercial practice is evenly split between English courts and international arbitral tribunals. He acts in general commercial cases with an emphasis on complex multi-jurisdictional litigation. Michal is also experienced in specialised areas, including investor-state disputes, insurance, and insolvency.

In the legal directories, he is described as “superbly gifted and a pleasure to work with”.

Michal is increasingly instructed to act as sole counsel, including in a one-week, high-value Commercial Court trial (Albion v Heritage and another [2022] EWHC 162 (Comm). He also frequently works in larger teams, not least in appellate cases, where he draws on his experiences as a Judicial Assistant to Lord Reed, then Deputy President, and now President of the Supreme Court.

He was recently instructed in two Supreme Court appeals: The CMA CGM LIBRA [2021] UKSC 51 about the proper construction of the Hague Rules and SAS v WPL regarding the jurisdiction of the English court to prevent, by injunction, the enforcement of a foreign judgment that was inconsistent with a prior domestic judgment and inconsistent with domestic public policy (in which the appeal settled).

As a Judicial Assistant at the UKSC in 2018-19, Michal worked on a number of leading commercial cases, including Vedanta [2019] UKSC 20 (jurisdiction in the context of a parent company’s liability for a subsidiary’s torts), Poole BC v GN [2019] UKSC 25 (assumption of responsibility in tort law), and Marex [2020] UKSC 31 (reflective loss rule in company law).

Prior to joining chambers, Michal taught contract and tort law at various Oxford colleges and, whilst at Harvard Law School, worked as a mediator in the Harvard Law School Mediation Programme, as a Student Attorney in the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project, and as a Judicial Intern in the Massachusetts Superior Court.

As a native German and Slovak speaker, Michal can work with original documents in German, Slovak and Czech.

https://www.twentyessex.com/people/michal-hain/

German (native); Slovak (native); French (conversational)