Thomas Seymour

Professional liability

Allied and directly complementary to Thomas‘s specialisms in pensions, trust and real property matters, he has substantial experience of acting and advising in professional negligence claims in those fields. Thomas is able to deploy his specialist knowledge of the particular practice area.

Thomas regularly acts and advises in claims arising from errors in the course of administering occupational pension schemes, and has extensive experience both in advising and acting for the trustees and/or employers as claimants and in representing the professional defendants (pensions consultants, actuaries and solicitors).

By way of example, since acting for the successful defendant in the leading case of Shore v Sedgwick Financial Services Ltd [2007] EWHC 2009, [2008] EWCA Civ 863, Thomas has acted and advised in a number of other professional negligence claims concerning alleged pensions mis-selling.

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Property

Thomas has been frequently engaged throughout his professional life in advising and litigating in real property disputes, in particular contracts for sale or lease and their enforcement, title and boundaries, restrictive covenants and their modification or discharge, easements (including rights of light), mortgages, commercial landlord and tenant issues, leasehold enfranchisement and general conveyancing issues.

Thomas also has significant experience of more specialist topics: school sites and rights of reverter; open spaces and rights of common; property cases involving charitable or public trusts; and cases having ecclesiastical law aspects. His range and depth of experience makes him well placed to provide swift and reliable advice on points which arise in the course of a property transaction.

Notable cases include:

• Dispute concerning claim to an exclusive fishery over the foreshore and seabed of River Severn at Porton, Monmouthshire: issues as to alleged manorial rights, following earlier decisions in Roberts v Swangrove Estates and Others [2007], Roberts v Crown Estates Commissioners [2008] P&CR.
• Application for a restoration order requiring the demolition of a building erected in breach of statute at public expense on a public open space in Spitalfields (2015-8): involving proceedings in the Administrative Court, London Consistory Court (June 2016) and Court of Arches (First appeal in 2015, second appeal in October 2018).
• Walbrook Trustees/Fattal: property litigation concerning multimillion-pound island site in the West End (2003-11), culminating in Fattal & Ors v Walbrook Trustees (Jersey Ltd & Ors [2010] EWHC 2767).
• Hurstanger Ltd v Wilson [2007] EWCA Civ 299 – an important Court of Appeal decision on the relationship between mortgage brokers and borrowers; the nature and extent of the duty to disclose commission received from the lender; and whether the borrower is entitled to have the mortgage set aside.
• Firstpost Homes Ltd v Johnson [1995] 4 AER 355 Court of Appeal. Contract for sale of land. Void for non-compliance with s.2 Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989.
• Kohn v Wagschal [2006] EWHC 3356 (property dispute: leave to enforce arbitration award: High Court and Court of Appeal).
• Official Custodian for Charities v Parway Estates Developments ltd [1984] 3 AER 679 CA; OCC v Mackey (No.1) [1984] 3 AER 689; (No.2) [1985] 2 AER 1016. Forfeiture of commercial lease on insolvency.
• Advising on whether the erection of the Holocaust Memorial would be unlawful as in breach of statutory duty under an Act of Parliament of 1900 requiring the laying out and use of the site as a garden.

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Trusts, probate and estates: contentious

Thomas acts and advises in a wide range of contentious and non-contentious trusts, charity, probate and estate matters, including:

• Breach of trust disputes.
• Construction and rectification of trust documents, contentious trust matters.
• Claims by trustees against advisors/third-parties.
• Charity matters generally, including charitable trusts.
• Probate and estates, construction and rectification of wills, the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, probate claims, issues and claims concerning the administration of estates (both internal and third-party claims), Beddoe proceedings, statutory wills, Court of Protection and next of kin enquiries.

Representative matters include: 

• Jeffreys and others v Scruton and others: a case which demonstrates the value of stating in clear terms the event upon which the ultimate trust is intended to take effect and also illustrates that the court will not lightly assume that there is anything in the will, or surrounding circumstances, which makes the will ambiguous so as to justify admitting extrinsic evidence under S.21 AJA 1982.
• Acting for an infant (and representative) beneficiary under settlements in proceedings in Bermuda concerning a proposal for rearrangement of the trusts and a confidential interim application (December 2017).
• Acting for the settlor and principal beneficiary of multimillion-pound settlements in proceedings in the Cayman Islands by the Trustees against the Bank of New York Trust Company Limited, to which the settlor was joined as third-party.
• Acting for the offshore trustees of settlements in an eight-year long dispute concerning property in London held through a corporate structure.
• Advising on an Inheritance Act claim by a second wife claiming against an estate largely comprising shares in a family company.
• Advising on whether school buildings erected in the 19th Century and used as a school are subject to a charitable trust.
• Acting and advising in contentious litigation concerning a building in a consecrated churchyard in central London and involving a complex web of trust, property and ecclesiastical issues, including a trust arising under the Open Spaces Act 1906.
• Acting for the trustees in litigation – and on the compromise (approved by the Court in 2015) – of a claim to set aside a settlement of a reversionary interest upon equitable grounds.
• Acting for the trustee of a family settlement, bringing proceedings in Gibraltar, joining the beneficiaries and settlor to determine whether the shares had been effectively settled or remained vested in the settlor.
• Acting for the corporate investment vehicle sued as defendant in major trust-related litigation in Gibraltar in the High Court and in the Court of Appeal (2008-9: subject-matter confidential).

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