Niall Edwards
Niall.Edwards@kennedyslaw.com
+44 1142 532 001
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Profile
Niall is a partner in our Sheffield office. He specialises in motor litigation and is technical lead within the firm’s strategic motor group. He became a motor team leader in 2005 and a partner in the motor team from 2006.
He advises on all aspects of defendant motor litigation. He deals with a broad selection of complex motor claims and large and catastrophic loss motor cases of up to the highest value.
Niall brings particular technical expertise into his handling of cases through his specialist knowledge and is a trusted advisor on complex motor loss claims, motor coverage, related court declaration and similar claims, valuable credit hire claims, test and appeal cases, brain injury cases, fatality claims, complex psychiatric injury claims and primary victim claims.
Niall continues to play a key and market-leading role in lobbying government and parliament on behalf of insurer clients on many aspects of civil reform including over time whiplash, court track changes, autonomous and connected vehicles, e-scooters, transport issues, telematics, MedCo, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, and Competition and Markets Authority and Law Commission consultations. He now also lobbies, presents and advises on autonomous vehicle technology. He has drafted responses, articles and papers in relation to all these areas.
Niall has played a lead role in business process reviews and innovations at Kennedys. He had a pivotal role in developing ground-breaking systems, including a new case management system to further enhance legal service and excellence with clients.
Niall has also contributed widely to trade and insurance magazines and journals including comments and articles in Insurance Post and Insurance Times and is often sourced for comment. He has presented at firm and insurance seminars as well as national and regional insurance and trade conferences on a variety of topical motor-related issues. He is frequently invited to conferences in a panel speaker role. Additionally, he authored a number of chapters on motor liability in Kennedys’ Claims Handling Law and Practice Guide, .
Niall has worked closely with a number of insurer clients to ensure that their intervention and other motor claims processes are as robust as possible, most recently in relation to ‘new’ heads of injury loss claimed like tinnitus.
He is a member of the Forum of Insurance Lawyers (FOIL).
Qualifications
- Qualified in 1998 in England and Wales
Niall Edwards knows his law inside and out, has excellent judgement and can motivate his team to achieve fantastic outcomes for clients. Exactly what you need.
Market recognition
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Recommended lawyer for 'Personal injury: defendant (Yorkshire and the Humber)'The Legal 500 UK 2024
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Recommended lawyer for 'Personal injury: defendant (Yorkshire and the Humber)'The Legal 500 UK 2023
- Recommended lawyer for 'Personal injury: defendant (Yorkshire and the Humber)'
"Niall Edwards knows his law inside and out, has excellent judgement and can motivate his team to achieve fantastic outcomes for clients. Exactly what you need."
"Niall Edwards is always able to provide detailed, focused and no-nonsense assistance to his clients in a very short space of time. I am not sure how he manages his time so well. He is absolutely client-focused, proposing the best solutions for the client and advising on all different options with a clear steer provided. He is without question one of the very best in his field, able to affably deal with the most complicated and demanding of cases."
"The team is ably headed up by Niall Edwards. They are a friendly team, working incredibly efficiently and proposing dynamic solutions to many issues. They have success where others would not through sheer tenacity and hard work."
The Legal 500 UK 2022 - Recommended lawyer for 'Personal injury: defendant (Yorkshire and the Humber)'
“Niall Edwards is a standout partner with excellent client skills and an ability to cut through legal verbiage to the heart of the matter. Excellent judgement and a really nice guy.”
The Legal 500 UK 2021 - Recommended Lawyer for 'Personal injury: defendant (Yorkshire and the Humber)'
The Legal 500 UK 2018/19
Awards
Work highlights
- L v W. The defendant suffered cough syncope and his lorry skewed across the M1 motorway causing extensive damage to motorway property and striking six vehicles. An automatism defence was successfully advanced such that all similar claims were either discontinued or withdrawn.
- P v T. The defendant driver suffered an ‘aura’, colliding with several vehicles on a motorway slip road resulting in a series of injury claims. T had a pre-existing condition but had been advised by medics to continue driving. A fairly unusual non-fault defence was successfully maintained.
- Dickenson and others v Tesco. Dealt with over 450 claims, including 65 appeals and retrials and four test cases in the Court of Appeal, relating to historic credit hire settlements and Autofocus rates evidence.
- Gibson v Chartis. Through pre-litigation to litigation Niall ran Part 18 and other conduct points resulting in a strike out of a liability-conceded Merseyside Court claim of £100,000, which was largely credit hire and injury based. An application for permission to appeal was refused and a further attempt to reissue proceeding was also struck out on grounds of abuse of process.
- A v A. Took the lead in challenging the provenance of third party credit hire evidence by applying to cross-examine (and challenge credibility) of a number of credit hire organisation rates witnesses who had sought to rely on hearsay notices. The multi-track claim settled then for a quarter of its original value.
Insurance and reinsurance