Practices

Disputes

Our expertise:

Our Disputes Group acts for a broad spectrum of clients, particularly those in the corporate and financial sectors. We are the first port of call for major corporations that find themselves in a dispute or that want advice on a matter that might become contentious.

We offer advice on all aspects of commercial dispute resolution, including financial disputes, administrative law, corporate and contractual disputes, planning and property disputes, professional negligence claims and fraud, privacy and defamation actions, patents disputes and product liability.  

Our lawyers are expert in legal, commercial and reputational risk, and we devise optimum strategies that focus on our clients’ commercial objectives. With our large-scale legal and technological resources, we facilitate the fast-tracking of the most complex commercial disputes through Ireland’s Commercial Court, the dominant force in Irish business litigation. 

Key areas:

Examples of the commercial disputes we most frequently deal with include:

• Banking and financial services disputes
• Commercial real estate disputes
• Competition and regulatory disputes
• Construction disputes
• Contractual and B2B disputes
• Corporate disputes
• Employment disputes
• Insurance disputes
• Intellectual property disputes
• Product liability
• Professional indemnity disputes

Key highlights include advising:

• DePuy International in the defence of multiple product liability claims in Ireland      
• Harcourt Life Assurance Company Limited, formerly IBRC Assurance Company Limited in the successful conclusion of Commercial Court litigation arising from investments made in four unit-linked property-backed life assurance funds with a combined value of approx. €1.4billion. Key issues in involved the nature of fiduciary duties, the private banker/customer relationship in the sale of the funds. Allegations of mis-selling and mis-management had also been made
• Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (in special liquidation) in the defence of high-profile proceedings which seek to challenge the validity of security taken by IBRC in respect of loans granted to the Quinn Group and family amounting to approximately €2.8billion. The litigation involves a series of linked and extremely complex multi-jurisdictional challenges brought by the Quinn family seeking to avoid liability for repayment of the loans advanced together with actions taken by IBRC to recover and/ or protect its security in each jurisdiction. The proceedings include actions in Sweden, Cyprus, Ukraine, Russia, India, BVI and Belize
• Pepper and Goldman Sachs in a breach of warranty claim against GE following a loan portfolio acquisition
• Vodafone Ireland Limited in two significant Commercial Court cases, a successful statutory appeal against the setting of inter-operator mobile termination rates, in which an appeal was settled and a judicial review of the exercise of the regulator’s spectrum management powers