Joanne Davies
Dispute Resolution and Commercial Litigation | Head of Department | Partner
Experience
Joanne is a Partner and Head of the Litigation and Dispute Resolution Department. Joanne is a solicitor with over 20 years’ experience in litigation matters. Having trained and qualified in 1994 at Wragge & Co, she also spent several years at Martineau Johnson, as well as having experience of working as in-house Counsel in the finance leasing industry.
Practice Area
Joanne has been with Keelys LLP since January 2018, leaving her previous head of department role for the opportunity to join Keelys. She took over head of department duties in January 2020 since when the department has gone from strength to strength. Joanne prides herself on taking a hands-on approach to cases and will always take into consideration the commercial issues that arise in any dispute. That ethos continues into the rest of her team.
Joanne has extensive experience that spans over 25 years of resolving all nature of commercial and contractual disputes. Whilst overseeing the department, she specialises in commercial property disputes, including commercial leases renewals and dilapidations, contested employment disputes, usually involving the enforcement of post termination restrictive covenants, minority shareholders’ disputes and cases involving the Commercial Agents Regulations. She also deals with any intellectual property cases, often taking on very well-known brands, fighting the corner of the smaller business.
Highlights
Joanne has acted in a substantial number of cases over the years, both large and small ranging from plc companies to limited companies, partnerships, sole traders and the private individual. Edited highlights from those many cases include:
- Represented an employee whose former employee sought an injunction against him preventing him from working for his new employer who was said to be a competitor and therefore it was argued that he was acting in breach of his post termination restrictive covenant obligations. The injunction was refused at first instance and that decision was appealed before the Court of Appeal when the employer’s appeal was dismissed [reported as Planon Ltd-v- Gilligan].
- Acted for a commercial agent who was dismissed from his role and for whom an order for substantial compensation under the Commercial Agents Regulations 1993 was obtained. The quantum of that compensation was, however, deferred pending the appeal by the principal on the question of liability in the first place. A (favourable) settlement of the entire case was achieved just days before the principal’s appeal was due to be heard before the Court of Appeal [unreported case but references in various legal articles have been made to that case namely Whitehead v Jenks & Cattell Engineering Ltd].
- Successfully settled a longstanding and difficult family dispute involving complex land ownership, and partnership and company issues at mediation;
- Advised on a protracted dispute involving numerous partnership and company transactions that also successfully settled at mediation.
- Achieved a favourable settlement via a court led Financial Dispute Resolution process for a corporate client that had bought a business but found after purchase irregularities in the accounting and record keeping. The client buyer refused to pay the final instalment of the purchase price to the seller and so the seller sued for the instalment. On behalf of the buyer, we defended and counterclaim based on a breach of indemnities in the sale agreement by the seller.
- Acted for a former director of a company who was served with injunctive proceedings for springboarding, whilst facing numerous accusations including being in breach of his fiduciary duty.
- Acted for a brother who was a minority shareholder in a family luxury brand company dispute following the death of the father who founded the company. The settlement was achieved after an all day mediation at somewhere around 3am the following day; still my longest ever mediation.
- Successfully acted for a district council in relation to refuse collection vehicles that repeatedly broke down and caused rubbish collections to be missed.
- Successfully obtained an injunction against a company that had presented a statutory demand against a corporate client for a debt that was in dispute.
- Acted for the alleged guarantor of a loan with a high street bank who maintained that the bank had agreed to release him from his liabilities but who did not have the evidence, and the bank refused to accept that evidence. The evidence was however, finally obtained from the bank after 6 rounds of disclosure, whereupon the claim against the “guarantor” was dropped and costs paid.
- Acted for private clients who had bought a property whose title included a large paddock and in relation to which the seller claimed mistake, as they had not intended to include it. The case involved complex legal issues of mistake (mutual/unilateral) and negligence and eventually was favourably resolved in my clients’ favour.
- Acted for an individual who had bought a piece of land to develop but whose architect and solicitors had both failed to spot that the planning permission with which the land was sold had lapsed by the time of purchase. At mediation, the advisers agreed substantial compensation for the buyer.
Qualifications
Solicitor
Interests
When not in the office, Joanne enjoys going to the gym and playing tennis (both time permitting), as well as walking, reading, history (especially all things medieval), theatre and travel (and if most of them can be combined then so much the better).
Phone:01543 420059
Email:jdavies@keelys.co.uk