Real Estate Litigation
As a landlord, tenant, property manager, owner or professional, you will no doubt have come across, or had the misfortune to be directly involved with real estate disputes. Without careful handling these disputes have the potential to create significant expenditure of time and money and opportunities to achieve the most practical and commercial resolution may be lost along the way.
We have dedicated lawyers who specialise in real estate disputes. Their knowledge and experience is used assertively and creatively for your benefit.
We recognise that the relationship between parties to a real estate dispute is one which is likely to last far longer than the dispute itself. Accordingly we focus on helping you to avoid being drawn into a dispute in the first place, and in all cases on providing you with a commercial, cost effective, and practical resolution of the issue, preferably without involving any of the more formal means of dispute resolution.
Where matters cannot be resolved without resort to some form of dispute resolution process, members have considerable experience in dealing with cases before the courts (County, High, and Appellate Courts) and various forms of tribunals (such as the Lands Tribunal and the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal). They are also skilled in resolving matters by way of arbitration, expert determination and alternative dispute resolution procedures such as mediation.
We deal with a wide variety of claims of which the following are illustrations:
- Disputes concerning development agreements.
- Enforcement of easements and restrictive covenants.
- Option agreements and rights of pre-emption.
- Withholding of consents to assignment, alterations, changes of use and underletting.
- Opposed and unopposed lease renewals.
- Break rights in leases.
- Contested rent reviews.
- Dilapidations.
- Disclaimer, forfeiture and surrender of leases.
- Possession actions.
- Service charge issues.
- Unauthorised occupiers.
- Professional negligence claims against real estate advisers.
- Judicial review and statutory challenges in planning matters.
- Injunctive relief.
- Tenant insolvency.
- Rights of light and party wall issues.
In the course of advising you and formulating the most appropriate strategy the team can draw on the knowledge and experience of colleagues practising in different disciplines, most notably lawyers in our real estate, construction, planning and tax teams. Integrated pragmatic advice enables us to deliver realistic merits appraisals and costs budgets which help you tackle the often thorny question of whether to confront or compromise.
Our clients include developers, landlords, lenders, occupiers, institutional and private investors, public authorities, educational establishments, public and private companies.
Nick Mullen, Director
Paul Tomkins, Senior Associate