About Byrom Street Chambers
Byrom Street Chambers is a specialist set of Chambers located in Manchester’s Spinningfields area, close to the Civil Justice Centre.
The premises at Byrom Street are modern, purpose-built and designed with particular attention to the needs of all clients. Facilities include large, comfortable conference rooms with video-conferencing suites, the latest information technology with wireless connection and an extensive on line library. All facilities have been designed with the disabled user in mind.
Byrom Street is a forward thinking set with traditional values, dedicated to the work of Leading and Senior Junior Counsel with extensive expertise in high value and complex cases. Chambers provides a highly individual and personalised service with an emphasis on client needs.
Chambers’ strategic plan of recruiting only specialist Counsel of the highest calibre is well recognised and welcomed by our clients. We believe that Byrom Street is Manchester's centre of excellence. Our philosophy of client care involves caring about the case and taking care of the client.
With this reputation for quality and service, members offer advice and advocacy in a range of specialisations and can provide the depth of cover necessary to conduct litigation in the most complex of cases.
We practise predominantly in the fields of professional negligence, personal injury with an emphasis on catastrophic cases, complex brain, spine, amputation claims and high value fatal injury claims, group and disease litigation. We also have a specialist team that practise in clinical negligence including high value birth injuries including those relating to cerebral palsy, delay in diagnosis of spinal injury or cancer, surgical errors and negligent mismanagement.
We are consistently ranked in the top tier of the independent legal directories with all members being recognised as leaders in their field.
Three members of Chambers currently sit as Deputy Judges of the High Court, three members sit as Recorders, one member sits on the Mental Health Review Tribunal, and two members are qualified CMC Mediators.
Former members of Chambers include Rt. Hon. Sir Brian Leveson, Rt. Hon. Dame Janet Smith, Sir David Clarke, Dame Caroline Swift, Sir Timothy King, Sir Stephen Stewart and H.H.J. Richard Pearce.
Members of Chambers appear in courts at all levels and their breadth of expertise is clear from the following sample of cases:
- Armes v Nottinghamshire County Council2017 - Supreme Court - a local authority is vicariously liable for sexual abuse committed by foster parents even though it exercised all reasonable care in the selection and monitoring of the foster parents
- Swift v Carpenter [2020] Court of Appeal - Represented the Personal Injuries Bar Association [“PIBA”] [leading Richard Whitehall of Deans Court Chambers] as the only permitted intervenor in this groundbreaking appeal on the assessment of damages for accommodation costs in catastrophic injury claims.
- Woodland v Essex County Council. Landmark Supreme Court case on non-delegable duties. Established that a school owes a non delegable duty to its pupils
- McDonald v National Grid. Landmark mesothelioma claim heard in Supreme Court
- Dunhill v Burgin – Supreme Court - what should happen when a claim is under-settled by a Claimant who – unbeknown to the Defendant – may lack litigation capacity? To what factors should the Court have regard when considering the issue of litigation capacity?
- Dianne Willmore v Knowsley MBC – Case determined in the Supreme Court. Claimant contracted mesothelioma as a result of exposure to asbestos when a pupil at secondary school
- S Sienkiewicz v Grief: Mesothelioma caused by occupational exposure to asbestos and/or environmental exposure unrelated to the Defendant’s business. Defendant contended that Claimant had to prove that tortious occupational exposure more than doubled the risk from environmental exposure of the Claimant developing mesothelioma. Case determined in the Supreme Court on the basis that the Fairchild doctrine of material contribution applied to such circumstances
- Various Insurers (Jersey Guernsey/Channel Islands) - Litigation arising out of Covid pandemic. Advising group of Channel Island insurers as to applicability of CA decision in the FCA Covid-19 BI Insurance Test Case to incidents outside the UK jurisdiction
- Kenyan Group LitigationLead and Junior Counsel, of a team of 10 including 2 other silks in the Kenyan Emergency Group Litigation, the trial of which began in May 2016, but has occupied Counsels attention for the last 4 years. The case involves personal injury claims, human rights, the applicability of foreign law, the doctrine of the Queen acting ‘in right of’ a Colony and SS32 and 33 Limitation Act.
- Thompstone v Tameside (CA) - Landmark case on Periodical Payments/Indexation
- Re: RK (European Court of Human Rights and HL) - Negligent diagnosis of non-accidental injury leading to removal of child from family
- Fairchild v Glenhaven (HL) - Asbestos disease
- Sowden v Lodge (CA) - Local Authority funding of care
- White v White & MIB (HL) – Incompatibility between the MIB Agreement and an EEC Insurance Directive
- Tomlinson v Congleton (HL) - Occupier’s Liability
- Miners’ Respiratory cases - Longest personal injury case on record
- Margereson & Hancock v JW Roberts Ltd (CA) - Environmental asbestos exposure
- Roberts v MOD (Inquest and civil claim) - Soldier lacking body armour
- Wright v MOD (Inquest and civil claims) - Kajaki minefield incident - lack of evacuation helicopters, mine maps and effective training
- Reay & Hope v BNFL (Sellafield litigation) - Leukaemia in children
- Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorks (HL) – Nervous shock
- White v Chief Constable of South Yorks (HL) – Nervous shock
- Shipman Inquiry
- Alder Hey Inquiry
- Hillsborough Inquiry