Industry Sector Expertise
Personal Injury
Christopher accepts all types of personal injury work. He has particular expertise in the following areas:
Claims against public authorities: Christopher is regularly instructed in personal injury claims against public bodies, including the police, prisons, and the probation service. He has authored the chapter in Butterworths Personal Injury Litigation Service on Liability of Public Authorities since 2018. He has acted in significant reported cases, including preparing the quantum case for the European Court of Human Rights in SW v the United Kingdom (Application no. 20166/92) and as first junior counsel in Lewis-Ranwell ([2022] EWHC 1213 (QB) and [2024] EWCA Civ 138), which concerns a claim for compensation for negligent medical care provided to a man who, whilst acutely mentally ill, killed three men. Many of Christopher’s claims against public authorities arise out of coronial proceedings (see below).
Workplace claims: Christopher accepts instructions in all manner of workplace injury claims. He has been a contributing author to the leading text Munkman on Employer’s Liability since 2019. He has litigated cases involving all of the most frequently encountered industrial diseases, including asbestos claims. He is currently instructed in hundreds of claims by former military personnel against the Ministry of Defence (MOD) for hearing loss caused by exposure to excessive noise during their service. As well as advising on individual claims, he has advised on various strategic issues, including opposition to an application by the MOD for a Group Litigation Order, and on the response to applications by the MOD to stay claims pending the outcome of related litigation.
Catastrophic injury: Christopher has been instructed as junior counsel (including to Robin Oppenheim KC and Selena Plowden KC) in various catastrophic injury cases, including cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injury, spinal injury, and multiple limb amputation. He is experienced in preparing Excel format schedules of loss, advising on evidence, and conducting pre-joint meeting and pre-trial conferences with experts. He regularly deals with interlocutory matters as sole counsel, often against leading counsel for the defendant(s).
Psychiatric injury: Christopher has extensive experience in claims for psychiatric injury, including his instruction for 33 psychiatrically injured police officers as part of the Grenfell Tower litigation (see below).
Fatal claims: Christopher offers a full service in fatal cases: acting at the inquest, advising on merits post-inquest, and, where appropriate, acting in the civil claim. He aims to secure a prompt but appropriate settlement as soon as possible after the inquest.
Sport: Christopher has acted on behalf of various injured sportspersons. In Levene v Canellas and Another, Christopher was instructed on behalf of Nigel Levine, a former elite athlete who represented Team GB at the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games, who was unable to compete after being injured in a motorbike accident on Tenerife (see The Times coverage here. The claim settled the week prior to the trial of liability as a preliminary issue (listed for five days in the High Court).
Christopher is currently instructed, alongside Fiona Murphy KC, to represent a former professional ballet dancer who sustained a career-ending ankle injury when he was subjected to a stop and search by police.
Clinical Negligence
Christopher undertakes a considerable volume of clinical negligence work, predominantly by repeat instruction from claimant clinical negligence firms. Examples include:
Birth injuries (child and maternal)
Delayed diagnosis of cancer
Delayed diagnosis of sepsis
Instruments / material left in the body after surgery
Mistakes during surgery (including vascular, urological, colorectal, and dental surgery)
Mistaken administration of medicine (wrong medicine and wrong dosage)
Failure to prescribe venous thromboembolism prophylaxis
Delayed diagnosis of fractures
Delay in ambulance response
Failure to obtain informed consent (including to surgery, and to mode of delivery)
Failures in psychiatric inpatient and outpatient care
Christopher also has experience in claims for compensation for sexual misconduct by medical professionals. For example, alongside Louise Price, he represented two vulnerable women who were groomed into an inappropriate sexual relationship with a cosmetic breast surgeon. Both claims settled out of court for a payment of damages and costs.
As in his personal injury work, Christopher is happy to be led in appropriate cases and has been led previously by counsel including Robin Oppenheim KC, Selena Plowden KC, and Theo Huckle KC.
Group litigation
Christopher is a specialist in personal injury group litigation.
He was instructed as first junior counsel for the police officer claimants in the Grenfell Tower litigation, representing 33 police officers who sustained psychiatric injury after attending the Tower during and in the aftermath of the fire. Many of the claims were high value (over £1 million). Christopher has undertaken a leading role in this case, including running a team of four junior barristers quantifying and pleading the individual claims, and dividing oral submissions on interlocutory matters with leading counsel.
Christopher is currently instructed by veterans of Britain’s nuclear testing programme in their continued campaign for accountability (see here).
Christopher was instructed as part of a team of counsel for the 172 claimants in the Primodos litigation, seeking compensation for birth defects caused by defendant’s hormone-based pregnancy test. Christopher’s role included devising and implementing a strategy for completion of schedules of information on behalf of each claimant, working to a very tight timescale.
Christopher has experience in preparing advice to funders on prospective group claims. He Will consider acting at risk or partly at risk in appropriate circumstances.
Inquests and inquiries
Christopher appears very regularly in inquests, typically, but not always, where the circumstances of the death intersect with his other areas of expertise (for example, inquests where there were failings by public authorities, inquests into workplace deaths, and inquests after clinical negligence).
Where an inquest has identified that a death was caused by negligence, Christopher is always happy to act in subsequent civil proceedings pursuant to a CFA (no-win-no-fee).
At the beginning of his career, Christopher was instructed as part of a counsel team representing Nottinghamshire victims in the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. Christopher will consider further Inquiry work in appropriate circumstances.
Actions Against the Police
Christopher is routinely instructed in personal injury claims against the police. He has appeared as sole counsel in numerous trials for assault and false imprisonment, both with and without a jury. He has represented claimants in cases arising out of inappropriate assessment of mental health in custody (including Lewis-Ranwell, see above). He is typically instructed in claims with difficult quantum, such as the claim on behalf of the professional ballet dancer noted above.
