Grant Strathdee

Grant is a Partner in our Glasgow office. He specialises in handling insurance recovery and liability claims, and has done so for the last 10 years. He heads up the Scottish property damage team in Glasgow, which deals with a wide variety of property and motor damage claims (including highway and street furniture claims) for all major insurers. His team also handles Scottish contribution claims and fraud recoveries.

Grant has particular experience in dealing with construction & engineering disputes, as well as providing advice on policy coverage issues for clients. He has extensive expertise in advising on the legal, practical and commercial issues in pursuing and defending high and complex value Scottish civil proceedings, particularly in relation to property damage claims. He is a practised litigator in handling disputes in the Sheriff Court and Court of Session and has extensive experience in pursuing recovery on insurance claims. His background in construction is of particular assistance when it comes to handling and supervising property damage claims.

Through past and current employment, Grant has been involved in a number of adjudications, arbitrations, litigations and mediations on behalf of insurers, statutory bodies, corporations and private individuals. His practical knowledge and innovative approach assists him with bringing about sensible and commercial results for his clients.

During his time at DAC Beachcroft, Grant has overhauled the operational management of his team in order to encourage a culture of over-performance, and has collaborated with internal and external contacts in order to harmonise systems and provide a seamless cross border service to the firm’s clients. His knowledge and experience means that he is ideally placed to provide strategic and technical input on Scottish claims and litigation.

Grant’s recent experience includes:

• Pursuing a claim against a contractor who, as the result of carrying out alteration works at a neighbouring property, had caused substantial structural damage to our insured client’s property. The prospects of recovery were poor due to the lack of information and/or documentation identifying what works had been carried out in the neighbouring property by the third party contractor, and in light of the lack of evidence demonstrating that these works caused the damage. Despite this, by robustly presenting the claim he received an admission of liability from the third party’s insurers. The third party’s insurers made an initial offer equating to a 69% recovery and made numerous betterment arguments. He was able to negotiate a recovery equating to 87% of our insurer client’s outlays along with a significant sum for uninsured losses.
• Supervising a junior solicitor on a recovery claim that involved significant cracking and destabilisation of a large high value property as a result of the removal of a load bearing wall in a basement property. Insufficient precautions had been taken when transferring the load borne by the wall onto temporary propping. We pursued the owner of the basement property, the main contractor, structural engineer and demolition subcontractor. Court proceedings were raised and we ultimately achieved a 97% recovery of our insurer client's outlay from the demolition contractor, with his insurers agreeing to meet our insurer client's legal costs. We were also able to recover considerable uninsured losses for the policyholder.
• Pursuing a high value Scottish fire damage recovery claim that had been identified via a missed opportunities review. Initially the third party insurers were refusing to indemnify the responsible third party. However, they were ultimately persuaded to indemnify. Following the issuing of court proceedings and robust pursuit of the claim, we managed to recover circa £1.1 million for insurers and circa £71,500 in uninsured losses.