Nicholas O’Brien

Nicholas is an experienced civil practitioner providing advisory, drafting and advocacy services in a wide range of fields. Areas of particular expertise or interest include the following:

Personal injury: including road traffic accidents, highways, accidents at work, occupier’s liability, defective premises and clinical negligence.

Employment: including unfair dismissal, protected disclosures, discrimination, TUPE, contract claims, breach of confidence and restraint of trade and related claims.

Defamation: with experience also in related areas of privacy, confidentiality, passing off, trademarks and copyright.

Housing, landlord and tenant, and property: including covenants, easements, boundary disputes, co-ownership and trusts, mortgages, conveyancing, wills, probate and succession, leasehold enfranchisement, lease assignments, business tenancies, forfeiture, surrender, service charges and leasehold management, disrepair, possession claims, homelessness and property-related solicitors’ negligence.

Contract and commercial: including sale of goods, bailment and hire, interference with goods, construction, consumer credit, asset financing, company and insolvency law.

Nicholas’s immigration practice includes all aspects of non-asylum work, with particular focus on ECHR Article 8 and family migration, EEA rights, Points-Based System, unlawful detention and judicial review. He is also instructed in related solicitors’ negligence matters.

• Lincoln’s Inn CPE Award (1994)

• Administrative and Constitutional Law Bar Association
• Human Rights Lawyers Association

• French (fluent)
• German (good)
• Italian (working knowledge)
• Portuguese (working knowledge)
• Spanish (working knowledge)

Reading, art, music, history, languages, politics, cricket and football (spectator standard only).

Defamation:

• Westcott v Westcott [2007] EWHC 2501 and on appeal [2008] EWCA Civ 818, [2009] 2 WLR 838: complaint to police enjoys absolute privilege

Employment:

• Okoro & Anor v Taylor Woodrow & Ors [2012] EWCA Civ 1590, [2013] Eq LR 147, ICR 580: banning worker from future engagement was one-off act, from which time for bringing a discrimination claim ran

Immigration:

• AN and NN (s.83 – asylum grounds only) Albania [2007] UKAIT 00097: AIT reported
• Nkrumah (OFM – annulment of residence permit) Ghana [2011] UKUT 163 (IAC)