Seminar
Expert witness
Professional development
Hardwicke is one of most highly regarded chambers in London. They specialise in commercial dispute resolution and property litigation, and acted on behalf of Network Rail in the high profile Williams and Waistell court case which centred on the liability for property damage from Japanese Knotweed.
We're informally partnered with Hardwicke to share expertise on Japanese Knotweed and it's impacts in the built environment.
In September 2018 we worked with them to host the first Japanese Knotweed seminar in London for barristers as evening event, Knotweed: Law & Practice. The event was chaired by Andy Creer and featured Dan Clugston from Advanced Invasives as a guest speaker, alongside Hardwicke's impressive property litigation team; Deputy District judge Andrew Skelly and barrister John Clargo.
The event was immediately over-subscribed. Before we had even started, Hardwicke asked if we could do a second event in November.
Across the Industry there are an estimated 1000 active claims relating to Japanese Knotweed liability
Barristers have to sit through probably more than their fair share of powerpoint presentations, so Hardwicke asked if we could introduce the Knotweed issue in a more refreshing way - we presented a very visual summary of our industry leading research and the key themes arising from our client work and surveyor case studies.
Following the seminar Dr Dan Jones and Dr Gareth Bruce now work closely with Hardwicke to refine our expert witness offer and interrogate the wide and varied body of work that is loosely regarded as Japanese Knotweed 'best practice'.
Invasive species liability is increasingly a business risk for county-level and national landowners and land managers
With legal fees for the Williams case are conservatively estimated at over £1.5 million, large landowners are increasingly aware of their exposure to Knotweed and the need for scientifically and legally credible treatment.
In effect, we are developing an in-house expert witness resource with a new degree of scientific and legal rigour, combined with the continually updated expertise from our own collection of professional case studies. In turn, this capacity allows us to reduce the legal liability and business risks of any large-scale Knotweed treatment strategy.
