David specialises in providing advice to insurers and defending litigated Industrial Disease claims.

He has over 10 years’ litigation experience advising clients across a range of sectors including Motor Injury, Casualty Injury, Regulatory and Industrial Disease. His key clients include Zurich, Riverstone and NFU Mutual.

David heads up the Scottish disease team. As well as supervising the more junior members of the team on lower value claims, David has his own caseload of files comprised principally of claims arising from alleged historic asbestos exposure. These includes claims for mesothelioma, asbestos-related lung cancer, asbestosis and diffuse pleural thickening. David also has experience handling claims for noise induced hearing loss, hand arm vibration syndrome and silicosis. David routinely handles high value, multi-pursuer and multi-defender fatal claims. He provides clear and detailed advice to clients on all aspects of such cases, and has experience in negotiating settlement of high value and complex fatal claims in a pro-active manner.

David is a key point of contact for clients in relation to Scottish claims, frequently receiving direct instructions from insurer clients.

Relevant experience includes:

• Assisting a client in negotiating settlement of a multi-pursuer fatal mesothelioma claim. Settlement was agreed at the point of a pre-trial meeting, with David saving the client a significant amount of money on both the damages payment and costs by advancing a date of knowledge argument.
• Avoiding any liability for a client in a claim for asbestosis and pleural plaques arising from alleged asbestos exposure that occurred in England. He argued that the cumulative exposure dose was insufficient to have caused asbestosis, and that the applicable law in such a claim should be the law of England and Wales rather than the Scots Law, meaning that the claim for pleural plaques would also not succeed against the insured.
• Securing the abandonment of a noise induced hearing loss claim with a finding of expenses in his favour on the basis that the claim was time barred.