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OUR TEAM

“DWF is a leading and experienced specialist legal advisor to police forces and public sector bodies. Many of the cases we deal with are high profile and we work closely with clients to manage reputational risk to achieve the desired outcome whilst delivering value.”

Rachel Jones, Head of Police, Care and Justice

DWF is proud to be appointed as a legal advisor on this framework

Our business purpose is to deliver positive outcomes with our colleagues, clients and communities and therefore we embed that in everything that we do. We work hard to build lasting relationships and invest time and effort to thoroughly understand our clients’ needs. We understand the importance of open and clear communication and ensure we keep our clients informed throughout any instruction. Through efficient allocation of resources, internal supervision and the use of technology to drive efficiencies, we are confident that we will deliver any matter in line with your timescales and expectations, whilst maintaining a high standard of work and delivering value. Many of the cases we deal with are high profile and extremely sensitive, for example, Cliff Richard v BBC & South Yorkshire Police, and therefore we recognise the need to work closely with clients to effectively manage reputational risk. We understand the complex challenges faced by our clients in balancing economics with damage to public trust and internal morale. We truly appreciate the importance of lessons learnt as these are the unintended benefits of the litigation. We actively encourage and support our clients to feed these lessons back into their risk cycles/training to avoid or reduce future litigation. We also ensure our clients keep pace with new and evolving case law or legislation. Because of our approach and results, we are trusted to act for numerous police forces, government and public sector bodies in relation to all types of litigation, inquests, judicial reviews and inquiries.

Find out how we can support you through this framework

DWF supports Lot 2 of this framework through our award-winning teams across Civil Litigation, Personal Injury and Debt Recovery. Click on the boxes below to find out more.

Malfeasance Claims

Employee Stress/Bullying and Harassment Claims

Personal Injury

Employer Liability/Public Liability

Motor

Debt Recovery

Catastrophic Injury

Case studies

Negligence claim brought against DWF'S police client

Area: Malfeasance claims A negligence claim brought against DWF's police client, following her attempted murder, was dismissed after a six day trial, resulting in a costs order in the Force's favour. The claimant alleged that the Force's interaction with her...

Area: Employee Stress/Bullying DWF director Denise Brosnan and partner Peter Wright acted in a claim being brought by a former Police Sergeant involving allegations of bullying/harassment over a five year period by a former commanding officer, resulting in him suffering a mental breakdown...

DWF act in bullying /harassment claim

Area: Catastrophic injury We received instructions to defend a personal injury claim pleaded at around £3.2 million. The employee sustained a spinal fracture when he fell over an obstruction in the workplace. Liability had been admitted by the defendant's loss adjusters on the portal shortly after the claim was submitted...

DWF successfully defend a personal injury claim

Who we are

DWF is a leading global provider of integrated legal and business services, operating across eight key sectors in over 30 global locations with over 4,000 people. Our purpose is to deliver positive outcomes with our colleagues, clients and communities. Our vision is to deliver integrated legal and business services on a global scale through our three offerings; Legal Advisory, Mindcrest and Connected Services. Our ability to seamlessly combine any number of these services to deliver bespoke solutions for our clients is our key differentiator. This Integrated Legal Management approach delivers greater operational efficiency, price certainty and transparency for our clients. Without compromising on quality or service.

Legal Advisory Premium legal advice and excellent client service. Our teams bring commercial intelligence and industry sector relevant experience.

Mindcrest Outsourced and process led legal services which standardise, systematise, scale and optimise legal workflows.

Connected Services Products and business services that enhance our legal offerings.

Sustainability in responsible business

ESG & responsible business

Environment

Diversity and Inclusion

Innovation

DWF's strategy in ESG and responsible business

Our ambition is to make DWF a world leader in responsible business, mobilising our collective strength and strategic commitments as a force for good in society. As a purpose led business, how we do business is just as important as what we do. Doing the right thing defines who we are as a responsible business and integrity is essential to everything we do. As a leading global provider of integrated legal and business services, we play an important role in helping business to grow and prosper. However, as the only Main Market listed business in our sector, we recognise that there is increased stakeholder interest in how we do business, where and who we do business with and the level of our ambition and action to integrate and manage ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) risks into our business operations.

A responsible and sustainable approach to doing business is central to our purpose and in conducting our business activities. We believe it is important to support the global transition to a sustainable low-carbon economy, leading by example in our own operations. In supporting the principles of sustainable development, we have in place an environmental management system to identify and control the impacts of our business and enhance current working practices. As a global company, this means: • Actively managing our carbon emissions aligned to a 1.5C pathway. • Taking action to ensure efficient use of resources, follow the ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ waste hierarchy. • Investing in technology to help drive our sustainability agenda. • Maintaining ISO14001 certification as part of the external auditing of our sustainability performance. • Collaborating to develop, apply and promote environmental best practice to enhance our resilience to climate change. • An Innovation Bootcamp programme to develop creativity skills and encourage a culture of innovation across the business.

Environment

Diversity is at the heart of creating a sustainable business. At DWF, we are building a stronger business by focusing on the diversity of our teams. We aim to create an inclusive environment where you can bring your whole self to work and enable our diversity to truly flourish. Our people help to shape our culture by sharing their perspectives, experiences and challenging our thinking. We value this diversity of thought as it helps us to become a better global business and be better together, which is one of DWF's core values.

Diversity and Inclusion

Innovation is a core part of our business model and strategy. We define innovation as ‘New ideas that we can turn into commercial value for our clients and our business’. To realise value from innovation we have a clear Corporate Innovation strategy to focus and support innovation investment and activity across the Group. To support the delivery of this strategy our core investments include: • Innovation & Ventures, a dedicated and multi-disciplinary team to lead innovation activity and orchestrate the required resources. • An integrated Horizon Scanning programme to identify trends and stimulate new ideas and Open Innovation challenges to encourage disruptive innovation. • A comprehensive model for the recognition and management of new ideas. • An award winning Legal Design approach that combines Design Thinking, Jobs-to-be-Done and Innovation Sprint methods and tools. • An Innovation Bootcamp programme to develop creativity skills and encourage a culture of innovation across the business.

Innovation

Key contacts

Partner Area of focus: Malfeasance claims T. M. E.

Rachel Jones

0161 604 1524 07702 955 911 rachel.jones@dwf.law

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Malfeasance Claims

DWF has a passionate and tight knit team of specialist police lawyers who regularly share knowledge and best practice to ensure the desired outcomes for our police clients. We develop close and long-term relationships at every level of a force. Rachel Jones is the Head of the team and the most recent edition of Chambers and Partners states, “Rachel…is very highly organised, very knowledgeable and a practical lawyer who is very adept at managing heavy caseloads and difficult cases. She is very good at managing personalities on complex environments”. The team are regularly instructed on claims involving false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, misfeasance in public office including judge and jury trials in the High and County Courts as well as negligence, assault, trespass, conversion, malicious procurement of search warrants, breach of data protection or privacy, Equality Act claims and claims under the Human Rights Act. We also act in high profile jury inquests, public inquiries and judicial reviews. The team’s focus is on providing clients with timely, concise advice whilst recognising the importance of controlling costs. We proactively determine our clients’ prospects of defending a claim at the earliest stage and then adopt the appropriate strategy. In addition, we appreciate the significance of potential reputational damage both internally and externally and we are able to support, manage and advise upon these risks. A great example of this is when the team secured a favourable judgment for South Yorkshire Police in the Cliff Richard litigation within which the credibility of the force’s employees had been challenged. Mann J refused to accept those allegations and commented on the credibility and honesty of the force's witnesses. Also, the early acceptance of SYP’s failings together with early protective offers resulted in indemnity costs being awarded to our client.

One of our longstanding police clients has commented that:

“Rachel Jones and her team offer sector specific expertise and knowledge, a real commitment to customer service and a genuine understanding and appreciation of the difficulties and challenges modern day policing presents for forces and their insurers. Rachel can always be relied upon both in terms of her professionalism and integrity and I would not hesitate to seek her advice and guidance on any relevant issues”.

Sue White, GMP, Insurance Risk Manager

Personal Injury

DWF’s personal injury teams are ranked as band 1 in both Chambers and Legal 500. Our experience is wide-ranging and includes all types of claims and values arising from either public and/or employer liability (including bullying, stress and harassment) as well as motor claims for public sector bodies. Our belief in target driven claims handling, supported by our innovative case management system, means that we drive matters to early conclusions while defending to trial those with real prospects of success.

Employer Liability/ Public Liability

Our Local Authority team is recognised in legal directories as one of the pre-eminent teams in the field. We act for all of the major local authority insurers and for numerous local authorities on direct instruction. A number of our partners contribute to and edit ‘Boyd and Fowles on Local Authority Liability’, the 7th Edition of which has recently been published. One of our partners is the legal advisor to ALARM. We are currently acting for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in relation to the Grenfell fire. We are also acting on a number of claims which are currently progressing through the appellate courts considering the liability of social services in ‘failure to remove’ cases.

Employee Stress/ Bullying and Harassment Claims

We have a dedicated team dealing with stress/bullying/harassment claims, pre- and post-litigation, often working alongside in-house legal teams. These cases are on the increase and one in five officers now report experiencing either PTSD or Complex PTSD symptoms. These cases are document heavy and often complex cases to handle where there is a considerable overlap with liability and causation issues. Agreeing a strategy at the beginning of a case pays dividends in the long run, as they are inevitably expensive cases to run. We can offer extensive experience and knowledge delivered by a team working closely with those involved in-house to ensure that the desired outcome is achieved in each case.

Motor

In motor claims we have experience of dealing with a range of motor accidents including claims arising from blue light response incidents which involve injuries of the greatest severity. In these cases we are often instructed very soon after the index accident and provide support and assistance in investigating the claim from the perspective of possible civil claims, as well as early liaison with claimant’s solicitors to work towards optimal claims outcomes.

Catastrophic Injury

Our specialist Insurance team includes a renowned Catastrophic and Major Injury team who handle all types of claims including public liability, employer's liability and motor. We routinely defend fatal accident claims and claims involving extensive orthopaedic injuries, brain injuries, spinal injuries and chronic pain. We offer a bespoke service to our clients and work in partnership with them to deliver the claims handling service that they require. Early catastrophic insurance claims resolution is generally of fundamental importance. Earlier settlement can have a significant impact on overall indemnity spend and our approach is driven by this objective. We’re committed to continually improving our products and the value that we add to our clients. Examples of our innovative approach include our team of medical and rehabilitation managers, forensics (which is our forensic accountancy service) and our in-house collision investigation expert.

Debt Recovery

DWF’s award-winning Recoveries department supports clients across all sectors, including government and the public sector, to collect debts quickly and cost-effectively. We are ranked band 1 in the Legal 500 for Dispute Resolution – Debt Recovery in London. We recover all types of debts, ranging from contractual debt to liabilities under statute, as well as overpayments and monies obtained by deceit. We offer a holistic solution, meaning that there is no debt too large or too small for an effective solution, whether that is a debt collection agency style process for low value high volume debt or a bespoke multi-disciplinary approach to complex litigation.

Pre-action collections (including outbound lettering, telephone calls and digital communications, to maximise engagement).

Starting court proceedings (typically through our membership with the County Court Business Centre, to maximise efficiency).

Our holistic solution includes:

Defended claim support (focussing on early resolution via ADR, Part 36 and costs-shifting, wherever possible including for Small Claims Track, Fast Track and Multi-track litigation).

Enforcement of County Court Judgments (CCJs) and High Court Orders (we have expertise in using all methods of enforcement that are available, either at the same time or one after another).

Personal or corporate insolvency processes (bankruptcy and winding-up), where appropriate.

Additionally, the team offer a range of ancillary services, including: adverse financial information monitoring, tracing (in line with the CSA's Trace Code of Conduct and Principles of Trace), debtor profiling and strategic enforcement recommendation reports, pensions and probate recoveries, return of goods, statute-barred debt solutions and claims against trespassers.

GET IN TOUCH

Provider to the National Legal Services Framework

In addition to Lot 2 NLSF services we are able to offer a range of other services off-framework.

Please get in touch for more information.

Director Area of focus: Stress claims T. M. E.

0121 200 0415 07713 342 048 denise.brosnan@dwf.law

Denise Brosnan

Partner Area of focus: Public liability claims T. M. E.

0207 645 9534 07912 120 831 mark.whittaker@dwf.law

Mark Whittaker

Director Area of focus: Debt T. E.

0113 261 6124 jeffersen.gledhill@dwf.law

Jefferson Gledhill

Operations Manager T. M. E.

0161 604 1525 07841 239 896 amy.parrish@dwf.law

Amy Parrish

Liability had been admitted by the defendant's loss adjusters on the portal shortly after the claim was submitted. At the time the claim value was stated to be under £25,000. At the point of instruction to DWF, the claimant was relying on a rheumatological report, which contended that his pre-existing condition had worsened to such a degree that he now could not work again and required lifelong commercial care. It was the claimant's case that if it wasn't for the accident he would have been able to self-manage his pre-existing rheumatological condition, such that he would have been able to work to normal retirement age and would not have required lifelong care. The claimant had applied to court for an interim payment of £50,000. The application for an interim payment was successfully opposed after the defendant applied to withdraw from the pre-action admission. Once the court had agreed to this the interim payment application fell away. By preventing the claimant from recovering further interims beyond what had already been paid before DWF was instructed, we were able to stop the claimant from self-funding a commercial care regime. In terms of the defence of the claim itself liability was contested, contributory negligence was raised and causation and quantum were kept in dispute. Extensive efforts were undertaken to obtain copies of the claimant's full medical, working history, HMRC and DWP records. The records revealed, amongst other matters, that the claimant had met the definition of 'disabled' under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 before the accident, his pre-accident alcohol dependency, the up and down nature of his working history and various non-accident related health complaints. Expert reports were obtained in the fields of neurosurgery, rheumatology, psychiatry, care and life expectancy. When read together, the DWF legal team were able to build a picture of a person who would have struggled to continue in employment much beyond the date of the accident anyway. In terms of his care claim, which constituted over two-thirds of his pleaded claim, it was the defendant's case that he would have required commercial care in the 'if the accident hadn't occurred' scenario. The claim was compromised at a joint settlement meeting and avoided the need for a trial which would have lasted over 5 days. The damages settlement was less than 5% of the pleaded value of the claim. The settlement also reflected risks to the claimant on liability and, in the event the claimant succeeded on liability, the likely deduction the court would make on the issue on contributory negligence. The favourable outcome was achieved by adopting a focused approach throughout litigation, identifying and instructing distinguished experts and seeking resolution of the claim at the optimum time to achieve a substantial saving.

DWF successfully defend a personal injury claim

We received instructions to defend a personal injury claim pleaded at around £3.2 million. The employee sustained a spinal fracture when he fell over an obstruction in the workplace.

Following a substantial absence from duty, he returned to work on restricted duties but alleged that he was led to believe that he would ultimately be required to return to his former role, which would have brought him into contact with former colleagues and managers. As a result he alleged that he suffered a further breakdown leading to him handing in his resignation. It was accepted that the claimant had suffered a psychiatric injury in the form of a breakdown prior to his first period of absence, but it was not accepted that this was as a result of bullying/harassment. The claimant had a number of significant stressors in his life at the time of his initial breakdown. The claim was dismissed as the court preferred the evidence of the Chief Inspector and the claimant's line manager, on the basis that they were reliable and honest witnesses and there was clear evidence that the claimant would not be posted to his former role when he was fit for active duty. The Judge found that the defendant had not breached its duty to the claimant and even if there had been a breach, accepted the medical evidence of the defendant to the extent that his mental health condition did not amount to a decline in his psychiatric condition consistent with a mental health injury having been caused by any action (or part of) by the defendant. The final schedule of loss in this case was approximately £500,000 and the costs of running the matter to trial equated to approximately 1/5th of the potential value of the case. This resulted in a considerable saving for the clients, given that any attempt to "buy-off" the claim at an earlier stage would have resulted in a substantial payment to cover the claimant's cost's (budgeted in region of £200,000) in addition to damages and payment of DWF's costs.

DWF act in bullying /harassment claim

DWF director Denise Brosnan and partner Peter Wright acted in a claim being brought by a former Police Sergeant involving allegations of bullying/harassment over a five year period by a former commanding officer, resulting in him suffering a mental breakdown.

The claimant alleged that the Force's interaction with her, in the hours and days before the index incident, had established a duty of care. The claimant argued that there had been an assumption of responsibility. We relied upon Michael v Chief Constable of South Wales Police in this regard, to support that the argument of assumption of responsibility was not tenable. It was clear in the present case that the Force's officers had not made any guarantees to the claimant. We had to undertake vast disclosure in this matter including an extensive IOPC investigation where some criticisms had been made of the officers involved. Furthermore, the trial took place virtually and we ensured all witnesses were provided with the full trial bundle in advance of the hearing. We held Teams conferences at the end of the day to ensure the witnesses were thoroughly supported throughout the trial. Running the matter to trial and getting a costs order in the Force's favour contributed to a costs saving in the region of £210,000.

Negligence claim brought against DWF'S police client

A negligence claim brought against DWF's police client, following her attempted murder, was dismissed after a six day trial, resulting in a costs order in the Force's favour.

07702 955 911

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OUR TEAM

07702 955 911

CALL:

OUR TEAM

07702 955 911

CALL:

OUR TEAM

07702 955 911

CALL:

OUR TEAM

07702 955 911

CALL:

OUR TEAM

07702 955 911

CALL:

OUR TEAM

Newsletter

Appointed legal advisor to the National Legal Service Framework

The team offer a range of ancillary services:

• Adverse financial information monitoring. • Tracing (in line with the CSA’s Trace Code of Conduct and Principles of Trace). • Debtor profiling and strategic enforcement recommendation reports. • Pensions and probate recoveries. • Return of goods. • Statute-barred debt solutions. • Claims against trespassers. • Public sector costs specialists. • Compliance and soft skills training. • Leadership responsibilities. • Workplace culture and ESG.