Christopher Knowles

Practice Areas

Christopher specialises in insurance and reinsurance, professional negligence, commercial litigation, civil fraud, conflict of laws, banking & finance, and aviation. Many of his cases are high-value, and international.

Recent highlights include:

• Appearing for successful policyholders in the FCA Business Interruption Insurance Test Case, and a related arbitration.

• Acting for insurers in claims by aircraft lessors under operator insurance policies arising from the alleged seizure of aircraft in Russia following the invasion of the Ukraine.

• Appearing in a £330 million claim by an Angolan telecoms operator against a company owned by one of the telecoms operator’s former directors, and the former director.

• Acting in McClean v Thornhill, a £40m barristers’ negligence claim: one of The Lawyer’s Top 20 cases of 2021.

• Defending a solicitors’ firm in an £83m professional negligence claim.

• Appearing for an insurer in a substantial LCIA arbitration over a bank’s professional indemnity cover.

• Acting for Rangers Football Club in a dispute with Sports Direct raising issues about breach of contract, deceit, and economic torts.

Career

Called 2011; Lincoln’s Inn.

Professional Memberships

COMBAR. Chancery Bar Association, BILA.

Publications

Co-author of Professional indemnity Insurance chapter of Professional Negligence and Liability; contributor to MacGillivray on Insurance Law (chapters on Good Faith and The Duty of Disclosure, Misrepresentation); co-author of the Lexis PSL section on loss of a chance; contributor to the Lloyds Law Report Financial Crime Reports.

Personal

St Catherine’s College University of Oxford (2009 BA (First Class) Law, 2010 BCL (Distinction)); BPTC (2011 (Very Competent)).