England - Yorkshire And The Humber • Dispute resolution

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Commercial litigation: Sheffield, South Yorkshire

Freeths LLP

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The commercial dispute resolution team at Freeths LLP has a broad range of expertise, including acting on shareholder, technology, manufacturing and engineering, partnership and trust, and professional negligence disputes. Practice head James Berry has a broad practice that covers a variety of commercial disputes, including interim injunction applications and enforcement and insolvency-related issues. Also noted are Gary Duffy and Ciaran Dearden, both of whom handle shareholder and partnership disputes.

Legal 500 Editorial commentary

Testimonials

Collated independently by Legal 500 research team.

  • ‘Freeths is overall amazing. They provide an excellent service and have different departments that can help with different issues. I would highly recommend them to anyone.’

  • ‘They provide a personal and professional approach with easy to reach partners who treat you as a client.’

  • ‘We would say that Freeths have a diverse breadth of team members, with those individuals having the social and professional ability to communicate with us without feeling that they somewhat sit above us and with the more traditional legal approach. We would particularly mention James Berry, Ciaran Dearden and Gary Duffy.’

  • ‘Dynamic, professional and commercial advice.’

  • ‘Gary Duffy gives sound, tailored, logical and dynamic advice on a wide range of litigation issues encountered in the running of a business.’

  • ‘Ciaran Dearden is a very strong, competent lawyer and easy to work with.’

  • ‘Gary Duffy offers a service beyond his price point, is very hands-on and takes a sensible and commercial view of matters.’

Key clients

  • Advanced Alloys Limited
  • Begbies Traynor LLP
  • Queenscourt Limited
  • Canning Conveyor Co. Limited
  • Spencer Technologies Inc
  • Clear Line Maintenance Ltd
  • Ant Marketing Limited
  • Planet X Ltd
  • MGS Technical Plastics Limited
  • Aldi Stores Limited

Work highlights

  • Acting for a national insolvency practitioner in respect of litigation involving a large construction company.
  • Acting for the shareholder of international hotel brands valued at circa €65m in a cross-border shareholder and director dispute which involves issues of diversion of business opportunities, misfeasance, misappropriation, fraud and tax evasion.
  • Acting for a supplier to the bulking handling industry with a circa £600,000 professional negligence claim against a firm of structural engineers in relation to the catastrophic failure of a ship-to-shore conveyor at a major shipping port used by major companies.

Lawyers

Rising stars

Ciaran Dearden

Freeths LLP

Ciaran specialises in commercial dispute resolution and has a breadth of experience including in complex contractual disputes of a technical nature, shareholder and director disputes, professional negligence and in matters of reputation management including the bringing and defending of claims in defamation.Ciaran is recognised as a leading junior lawyer, having been shortlisted by The Law Society as Junior Lawyer of the Year in 2017 and Highly Commended as a Rising Star in the Modern Law Awards in 2018.

Leading individuals

James Berry

Freeths LLP

. James leads the Dispute Resolution team at Freeths’ Sheffield office which prides itself on building long-term client relationships by being outcome-driven and providing commercial and pragmatic advice.   James advises a diverse range of clients with a particular focus on the manufacturing, construction and technology sectors. He deals with a wide variety of commercial disputes including complex IT issues, shareholder disputes, enforcement of restrictive covenants, claims arising from the sale and purchase of businesses, warranty claims, professional negligence claims and commercial contract disputes. The Legal 500 recognises that he “works stupendously hard and is clever and easy to work with“.   James has extensive experience of dealing with High Court litigation particularly in the context of handling interim injunction applications, unfair prejudice proceedings and high value/commercially sensitive contractual disputes. He is an active proponent of alternative dispute resolution including mediation, expert determination and negotiation and has experience of dealing with international claims involving companies who are based overseas including Australia, India, Pakistan, France and the US, dealt with through court proceedings and arbitration.   He has considerable experience of working with senior board members of companies across SMEs, PLCs, AIM and Fortune 500 – with a proven track record of success and particular emphasis on client care and delivering a high quality service.

Practice head

The lawyer(s) leading their teams.

James Berry

Other key lawyers

Gary Duffy, Ciaran Dearden

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