Milberg London LLP

Managing Partner: James Oldnall

Number of partners: 6

Number of other fee-earners: 15

Firm Overview:

Milberg London LLP is a claimant-focused litigation boutique. Milberg London’s partners spent more than 15 years litigating in London’s powerhouses across the City before establishing their own firm in 2020. The team is best known for acting for claimants in group actions, competition claims and commercial litigation.The team’s commercial pedigree was forged in the biggest cases at the biggest firms in London. The firm undertakes a broad range of disputes work and have a track record of resolving complex, high value disputes for clients.

James Oldnall, Polly Blenkin, Edward Cardington and James Taylor worked together for many years at Mishcon de Reya. Their impressive work was recognised in a cover shoot for The Lawyer when two of their cases were featured in the Top 20 Cases of 2016. They developed a reputation for acting in technically complex and legally significant cases, often against large institutional defendants. James and Nicola Vinovrški first met at Clyde & Co in 2007 and worked on some of the biggest commercial disputes of the decade such as acting for former owners of Liverpool Football Club in their high-profile claim against former directors and the Royal Bank of Scotland. They were reunited at Mishcon before Nicola was invited to join the partnership at Milberg London in 2021. Natasha Pearman’s sterling reputation in the competition litigation space was well known and she joined Milberg London to launch its competition practice.

From the outset, the partners were keen to build a small, exceptional group of lawyers. Through a combination of former colleagues and strategic recruitment of impressive litigators from other London practices, Milberg London has made huge strides as a firm and on behalf of their clients in their early years.

Areas of Practice:

Group Actions

Milberg London is at the forefront of group action law and practice and are instructed in some of the most significant multi-party cases ever to be heard before the courts in this jurisdiction.

Milberg London represents over 100,000 claimants as part of ‘opt-in’ group litigations against various car manufacturers in relation to ‘Dieselgate’. Claims have been brought in numerous jurisdictions on behalf of millions of claimants and are amongst the largest pieces of litigation in England & Wales.

A founding firm of the Collective Redress Lawyers Association (CORLA)and involved on its committees, Milberg London is a market leader in the practice, procedure, legal knowledge and commercial imperatives involved in pursuing litigation on a collective basis for large groups of clients.

Competition Litigation

The firm’s Competition Litigation practice focuses on consumer redress and holding companies that have infringed competition law to account.

The team is headed by Natasha Pearman, a highly regarded competition lawyer, Natasha was responsible for the ground-breaking Justin Le Patourel v BT claim, which was the second ever collective action to be certified by the Competition Appeal Tribunal.

In 2022, Milberg’s Competition team filed a claim on behalf of millions of people against Sony PlayStation.

Commercial Litigation

As a conflict-free litigation boutique, Milberg London is well-placed to resolve complex, high-value commercial disputes for corporate and individual clients. With an in-depth understanding of disputes involving financial markets and products, private equity, hedge funds, shareholder and companies’ issues, fraud, and mis-selling, the lawyers in Milberg commercial litigation team have acted for and against global financial institutions, major European banks, private equity houses, hedge funds, FTSE-100 listed retailers and international players in a range of sectors including manufacturing and natural resource extraction.

Expertise includes:

Due diligence and investigations

Banking and finance disputes

Commercial litigation

Contractual disputes

Commercial Arbitration

Mediation

Fraud

Shareholder and company disputes

The partner team has extensive experience of some of the largest, most complex and high-profile disputes before the London courts. The team also has significant experience in obtaining and defending interim injunctive relief in civil fraud claims, such as freezing orders, search orders and disclosure orders.

Litigation Funding

The Milberg London team is well acquainted with the litigation funding market which operates hand in hand with collective redress and many other forms of litigation. The partnership has strong relationships with the main players in the litigation funding market, including members of the Association of Litigation Funders (ALF). They are highly experienced in negotiating and obtaining ATE insurance policies, sourcing funding to support claims, negotiating funding agreements and setting up and leading group action steering committees to ensure claims are run cost effectively and with appropriate downside protection.