Jacqueline Perry

Contract and Tort Barrister London

Jacqueline Perry is a highly experienced contract and tort barrister in London. She has been handling legal matters in both the California and the United Kingdom since 1975, and has been involved in many high-profile, public-interest cases regarding personal injury, clinical negligence, product liability and insurance.

She is highly thought of by her professional clients, who instruct her in the sure knowledge of her thoroughness, fearlessness and sound and sensitive approach to all aspects of her work. Jacqueline Perry has frequently successfully pioneered arguments and points of law or practice.

She has acted for both claimants and defendants, representing local authorities and insurers as well as receiving a significant volume of instructions from trades’ unions and Government departments, the Police and the Fire Brigade. She has acted for claimants in group action cases arising out of major disasters, including the original and recent Thalidomide claims. She also instructed in major multi-party business and human rights matters and high-profile group actions against multi-national corporations, particularly those arising out of the extractive industries in Africa.

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Jacqueline Perry is recommended in the most recent editions of Chambers and Partners and Legal 500 for her work in the area of Product Liability.

 

 

About Jacqueline Perry

Dual qualified (UK and California Bar) for many years, Jacqueline Perry’s areas of work span contract and tort. She handles commercial and insurance matters, both in the UK and the US, and has been practising in recent years in substantial and highly publicised cases relating to product liability, professional negligence, personal injury and clinical negligence. Much of her work has an international flavour.

As a qualified and practising Californian lawyer, Jacqueline Perry has consolidated her field of expertise in this jurisdiction and she has successfully litigated in front of civil juries in the California Superior Court in multi-million-dollar claims.

From the mid-90s and still continuing today, Jacqueline Perry has been advising the victims of the drug Thalidomide in respect of the funding that needed to be substantially increased for them. On several successful occasions over the many years, Jacqueline Perry has "taken on" Guinness PLC, then Diageo PLC, as well as HM Government and she has been instrumental in obtaining many millions of pounds for these claimants as well as an apology (drafted by her) from the last Labour Government on behalf of the authorities who allowed this disaster to occur. For this matter Jacqueline acted pro bono throughout.

From the beginning of her career Jacqueline Perry has been instructed in insurance claims ranging from motor traffic cases to municipal and local government cases, mainly on behalf of the defendant insurers. Jacqueline Perry's experience of personal injury work and her many years of reading, advising upon and working with or having to cross-examine medical experts made the transition to actually working in the field of clinical negligence an obvious cross-over.

Areas of Practice

Jacqueline Perry’s focus in recent years has been in counselling for claimants against international companies. Proving negligence and liability across borders and negotiating class action settlements on behalf of people injured industrial accidents.

  • Commercial / International
  • Product liability
  • Insurance and re-insurance

  • Personal injury
  • Clinical negligence
  • Costs

Professional milestones

  • MA – Oxford University – Jurisprudence
  • Called to the Bar – 1975
  • Paper written at request of head of Policy Studies Unit of IOD on English and European Jurisprudence – 1988
  • Women's Lawyer Conference, invited speaker – 1999
  • Admitted to California Bar – 2001
  • Bencher of Gray’s Inn – 2005
  • Appointed to the Queen's Counsel – 2006
  • Fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers – 2009
  • Master of Students, Gray's Inn – 2009-2011
  • Speaker on Corporate Manslaughter at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford - May 2010
  • Bar Conference: invited panel participant for Association of Women Barristers – 2010
  • Panel speaker for Gray's event "Call to the International Bar" - April 2011
  • Selected by the South Eastern Circuit to participate as a faculty member in the civil advocacy course run at Florida University - May 2013
  • Co-authored paper on proposals for the future of the Inns of Court and re-organisation of the legal professions in England & Wales - published by 'Graya' - June 2013
  • Invited lecturer on corporate litigation by Pepperdine University Law school, London programme - July 2013
  • Grade "A" Advocacy Trainer for Gray's Inn
  • Royal Society of Medicine, a UK Consulting Editor for “Medicine, Science and the Law”

 

 

 

 

 

Cases

Many of Jacqueline Perry’s cases have been reported over the years, in the law reports, in the Personal Injury Quantum Reports and written up in Kemp & Kemp as well as other publications. Jacqueline Perry is involved in both English and in Californian multi-million pound claims against major international oil companies arising out of oil spillages and explosions which have had catastrophic human and environmental impact. Some of the significant reported cases are listed below.

  •  Jacqueline Perry successfully negotiated a multi-million pound settlement for some 7500 citizens of the Bodo region in the Delta area of the Republic of Nigeria arising from serious oil spills perpetrated by Shell Nigeria.
  • She has recently been leading in a professional negligence case which was litigated in the Commercial court against Leigh Day solicitors arising from the Trafigura pollution in the Ivory Coast. She was instructed in behalf of nearly 6000 Ivorians who were deprived of their compensation following the settlement with Trafigura.
  • In 2015 she argued a complex matter for clients in St. Lucia in the Privy Council on the interpretation of the St. Lucia civil code as it applied to a dispute on a hypothec between her clients and the First Caribbean International Bank.
  • Chewings v Williams: Serious leg injuries. Risk of deterioration. Possibility of amputation. Whether provisional damages suitable and if so, for what period.
  • Armsden v Kent Police EWCA: Duty of care of emergency vehicles when answering urgent response calls.
  • Sahakian v McDonnell EWHC 3242: Causation; contributory negligence; speed contributing to severity of injury and whether this should be a factor in the negligence of driver.
  • Daniels v Metropolitan Police Commissioner EWCA: Costs dispute arising out of very late service of evidence.
  • Chester v Afshar AC: Autonomy of patient when doctor seeking consent for surgery.
  • Bacon v White: Fatal diving accident and issue of contributory negligence of novice diver.
  • Lewis v Osborne: Value of a mother’s services following her death in a road traffic collision when vehicle driven by claimant’s father.
  • Birch v Hales Containers (CA): Early decision on admissibility of surveillance evidence – when appropriate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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