Serjeants’ Inn specialises in important, high profile medical, police, regulatory, criminal and public law cases, often involving political, ethical or social issues. Our barristers deal with litigation relating to the issues of our day such as assisted suicide, the refugee crisis, historic child abuse allegations and national security, to name just a few. Many of our cases span elements of both public and private law. They affect the rights of both individuals and the state.
Our cases often involve new and important points of law and we are frequently instructed to act in test cases: recent examples include proceedings brought by a killer against the NHS for damage arising from her crime and a false imprisonment claim relating to “rolling containment” policing of football matches.
Crucially, our cases are always of the utmost human significance: with this in mind, we work in partnership with our instructing solicitors to secure the best outcome and to support the lay client throughout.
We are delighted therefore that – as well as being in the top 25 chambers for proportionate number of rankings – we are one of Chambers & Partners top 20 client service sets. The directory notes that “this co-operative, helpful and responsive team is noted for being particularly easy to deal with and highly approachable”.
Recent examples include:
- Supreme Court proceedings including the judgment which changed the law on the recoverability of surrogacy damages and the seminal case on the law of illegality in clinical negligence cases and in the law of tort;
- the Undercover Policing, Child Sexual Abuse, Covid-19, Infected Blood, Manchester Arena Attack, and Salisbury poisonings public inquiries;
- the Guildford pub bombings, Croydon tram derailment, Stephen Port murder victims, London Bridge, Westminster and Fishmongers’ Hall terrorist attack and Shoreham airshow crash inquests;
- acting for the Director General of the Independent Office for Police Conduct in the Williams and Dos Santos Stop and Search Proceedings, in which two officers were dismissed without notice for a breach of the Standards of Professional Behaviour for honesty and integrity; and
- withdrawal of medical treatment cases, including those relating to Charlie Gard, Alfie Evans and Archie Battersbee.
Please click on the links to the left for further details of our specialist fields.