St John's Buildings

Personal Injury, Clinical Negligence, Fraud - Civil

Cressida is a specialist junior civil practitioner with a particular focus on personal injury, clinical negligence and credit hire disputes.

Cressida accepts instructions in all areas of personal injury. Cressida regularly provides written advices on quantum for infant settlement approvals, and has experience of drafting statements of case in a wide range of personal injury and clinical negligence disputes.

Cressida is developing a busy practice in advising in road traffic accident cases as to quantum following the introduction of the Whiplash Injury Regulations 2021. Cressida prides herself on her ability to turn papers around promptly.

Cressida welcomes instructions to advise and draft pleadings in clinical negligence matters. Cressida’s meticulous focus on detail makes her particularly good at reviewing medical records.

She has previously assisted with drafting pleadings and schedules of loss in medical and dental negligence claims, and is keen to grow her practice in this area.

In her Fraud practice, Cressida has successfully defended several road traffic claims, involving liability and credit hire disputes, on behalf of insurers. Cressida has successfully argued that even though the Defendant insurer had accepted liability for a road traffic accident, the Claimant was not entitled to recover any costs because the Defendant had made a Copley v Lawn-compliant intervention offer which the Claimant had rejected. Cressida has also used effective cross-examination of claimants in credit hire cases on a number of occasions to successfully argue for dismissal of such claims due to unenforceability of the hire agreement.

Cressida is very alert to cases where the identity of a party has a bearing on the correct measure of loss. In a recent claim for basic hire in respect of which the Defendant had admitted liability, Cressida was nevertheless able to get the claim dismissed because the claimant was a limited company and the damaged vehicle was a profit-earning chattel, but no evidence of avoided loss of profits had been disclosed by the claimant.

Cressida enjoys dealing with unusual legal and procedural problems. Cressida recently used a successful res judicata argument to secure a one-third deduction from damages awarded following a road accident, where the claim arose from the same circumstances as a previous claim in which liability had been decided by consent, but was brought by a different claimant against the same defendant. Cressida is able to deal with such problems sensitively where required, as in a recent case where she successfully argued that the claim was a nullity due to having been issued in the name of a deceased person.

Cressida was called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn in 2019, and accepted tenancy at St John’s Buildings in October 2022 following successful completion of her pupillage under the supervision of William Poole.

Northern Circuit Personal Injury Bar Association The Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn

BPTC, Very Competent, University of Law Leeds (2019) LLM, Distinction, University of Law Leeds (2019) LLB (Hons), 2:1, University of Durham (2018)