Gill Burnett

Gill is a Legal Director working across the Northern practice.  She has over twenty years’ experience in acting for London market insurers in defending claims brought against a range of professionals including,  solicitors, accountants, planning consultants and construction professionals.  Gill has extensive experience of advising insurers on policy coverage issues (including, most recently aggregation, notification of circumstances and breach of the duty of fair presentation) and has completed two secondments with London market insurers.

Gill's experience includes:

• Acting in R (on the application of Bluefin Insurance Services) v Financial Ombudsman Services Limited (2014) in successfully challenging, by judicial review the FOS' decision to assume jurisdiction in respect of a complaint relating to Directors and Officers insurance.  The Court found the FOS had no jurisdiction to rule on a commercial claim brought against Bluefin. This case had significant implications for the insurance industry, clarifying the remit of the FOS
• Acting on the successful appeal to the Court of Appeal on a £3million claim relating to allegedly negligent preparation of a net asset statement (HIT Finance v Cohen Arnold & Co)  
• Defending a range of claims against accountants and auditors, to include claims arising out the alleged fraud of a college bursar and company directors
• Defending solicitors on claims arising from all areas of practice, to include:
  • alleged negligent estate planning and administration
  • various mergers and acquisition transactions
  • intellectual property claims
  • claims arising from property portfolio management
• Acting for architects in relation to claims arising out of alleged negligent design, project management, inspection of works, erroneous setting out and breach of planning permissions
• Defending various professionals in a number of high value, complex disputes in respect of renewable energy schemes

Gill is a ranked by the Legal 500 as a “Rising Star” and Tier 1 lawyer and is described as having “excellent attention to detail, leaving nothing unturned”. Chambers and Partners (2016) describes Gill as “based in the firms Newcastle office and sources say she is “very good and has the experience of having dealt with high-value cases” and that she “hunts down evidence and smells when there’s a rat in the room”.