Richard Seabrook

Year called:

1987

Email:

richardseabrook@ropewalk.co.uk

Qualifications:

LLB

Practice areas:

Personal Injury, Clinical Negligence, Disease, Fraudulent Claims, Regulatory, Employment

Richard Seabrook was called to the Bar in 1987.

After initially conducting a broad mix of work with a strong criminal/common law focus, he developed a practice specialising in personal injury and employment law.  Richard was first appointed as Junior Counsel to the Crown, Civil Litigation Regional Panel (Treasury Counsel) 1994, being selectively re-appointed on several occasions since.  He sat as a Part-Time Chairman of the Employment Tribunals (Birmingham Region) for a short period before relinquishing the role to concentrate on his practice.

He is experienced in all types of personal injury and fatal accident claims, and does an increasing amount of clinical negligence and inquest work as detailed below.

Personal Injury

General personal injury work has been the most significant component of Richard's practice since his call.

Acting for both claimants and defendants, he has gained considerable experience of all stages of the full range of personal injury claims, including fatal accidents, clinical negligence, traumatic injury and occupational disease claims. 

His personal injury practice has, through more than 20 years, afforded him experience of conducting personal injury litigation from pre-issue right through to conducting appeals in the Court of Appeal.  The range of work undertaken by him includes any type of personal injury claim litigated on the Multi Track.  He undertakes advisory work in respect of all aspects of liability, quantum, tactics and evidence, conducts conferences with relevant experts, attends interlocutory hearings and conducts trials and appeals.  Joint Settlement meetings are becoming an increasingly frequent entry in his diary.

He has been Junior Treasury Counsel to the Crown in respect of personal injury work since 1994.

Clinical Negligence

Richard's clinical negligence work is expanding rapidly and although he presently acts predominantly for claimants, he is keen to balance out the work he undertakes.

The litigation he has had experience of conducting include deaths and injury resulting from inadequate medical attention, poor surgical practice, failure to administer appropriate medical treatment and systemic failure.

He has dealt with a very wide range of areas of medical practice, including Orthopaedics, Dentistry, Ophthalmic, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Accident & Emergency and Plastics.  He has dealt with claims relating to failed hip replacement surgery, failure to diagnose diabetic retinopathy, failed breast enlargement surgery, death resulting from failure to recognise the progression of Hereditary Angeodema and negligently conducted hysterectomies amongst many others.

Disease

Occupational disease work is one aspect of personal injury work conducted by Richard, and he has obtained significant experience of all aspects of this type of work since he moved to the Ropewalk in 1996.

He was Counsel for the defendant in the case of Holtby -v- Brigham and Cowan (Hull) Limited and was the first to raise the issue of divisibility of injury in relation to asbestosis, a decision which he assisted upholding as Junior Counsel in the Court of Appeal.

He was also Counsel for one of the few successful claimants at first instance, again upheld in the Court of Appeal, in the work-related stress cases known as Hartman -v- South Essex Mental Health NHS Trust and Others.

In addition to involvement in those significant reported cases he routinely deals with cases relating to all aspects of disease, including asbestos-related, VWF, NIHL and WRULD.

As well as undertaking all advisory work and specialist pleadings in this area, Richard is experienced in conducting limitation trials relating to disease injury as well as undertaking the full hearings.

Fraudulent Claims

Fraudulent claims come in a variety of shapes and sizes from outright invention of an accident/injury through to the more subtle deliberate exaggeration of legitimate heads of damage.

Richard's initial 10 years of practice, involving a significant element of Crown Court criminal work before moving to the Ropewalk, makes him perhaps particularly well-placed to explore these types of claim.  Cross-examination of claimants thought to be pursuing fraudulent claims is, for him, an area of particular interest and professional reward.

Whilst aware of the recognition by Courts of chronic pain, ME, fibromyalgia, somatoform disorders and the like, Richard is well able to probe into the divide between the genuine and the fraudulent.  His most startling success was a false reflex sympathetic dystrophy claim where a claimant who broke his thumb at work ended up confined to a wheelchair apparently unable to walk, work or care for himself.  He was exposed at the trial as a fraud and was at the conclusion of his cross-examination forced to discontinue his claim and pay the defendant's costs on Judicial threat of having the matter referred to the DPP.