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Anne-Marie Knight

Partner

Biography

Anne-Marie is a Partner based at Weightmans’ Newcastle Office, who specialises in defending claims against a wide range of professionals. She has thirty years’ experience of advising both insurers and their insured professional clients in this field.

Anne-Marie is regularly instructed in claims against traditional professionals, such as architects, engineers, design and build contractors, approved inspectors, cladding designers, asbestos surveyors, building surveyors, solicitors and accountants.

She has also advised in relation to claims against emerging professions, such as, process servers, heritage consultants and recruitment consultants and has experience of  disciplinary and criminal proceedings and arbitration.

In addition to defending claims brought against professionals, Anne-Marie is regularly instructed by Insurers to advise on policy coverage matters.

Anne-Marie is again recommended by the Legal 500 as one of the Leading Individuals in the North and has for many years been recognised in Chambers and Partners as a highly ranked and recommended professional negligence lawyer. She has acquired a reputation for hard work, attention to detail and excellent client service delivery.

She is an accredited Mediator and has successfully conducted many mediations.

Notable cases

  • YJL Ltd v- Jacobs One Limited [2017]EWHC 2625 (TCC) The court had to determine whether the terms of an oral agreement, by which an established construction company provided funding to a start up company and gave permission for its name to be used to enter into construction contracts, included an indemnity to the established company. Anne-Marie acted for the defendant in the claim being dismissed at trial with costs in favour of her client.
  • Williams Tarr Construction Ltd -v- Anthony Roylance Limited [2018] EWHC 2339 (TCC) Anne-Marie lead the team in successfully defending a claim at trial for breach of contract and breach of warranty against a chartered civil engineer for the defective design of a retaining wall. Although the Claimant construction company succeeded in demonstrating that it had engaged the engineer in his personal capacity to provide design services, it failed to demonstrate that the engineer had been engaged to design the retaining wall and so there could have been no breach.
  • Associated Newspapers Ltd -v- Buckingham Group Contracting Limited [2022] EWHC 2767 (TCC) Anne-Marie acted for the Defendant  in a £16million claim for breach of a construction contract where the court declined to approve the Claimant’s costs budget, finding it to be disproportionate. The budget included solicitors’ hourly rates that were significantly in excess of guideline rates, and although the Claimant was free to use expensive lawyers, its legal team would need to consider the extent to which work could be delegated to more junior fee earners.

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