Geoff is a Partner in our Dispute Resolution Team and has over 35 years’ experience of resolving disputes, working in City, international and US law firms.
Geoff has acted on a wide range of significant commercial litigation matters, including complex corporate disputes, warranty claims and partnership and trust matters.
For the last twenty-five years, he has had a particular focus acting for both suppliers and customers, resolving major IT disputes and failing projects and has acted on some of the largest IT contracts in the UK.
Chambers notes that “Geoff Mendelsohn impresses clients with his ability to deal with difficult cases in a calm and competent way” and he has appeared in the Legal 500 as “a genuine contentious heavyweight as demonstrated by his representation on high value disputes”.
Geoff considers that understanding the pros and cons of a case as soon as possible is paramount to applying an appropriate strategy to resolve a dispute. This includes ADR and Geoff has represented clients in dozens of successful mediations.
A sample of Geoff's cases include:
Acted for three of the five partners in a partnership dispute with no partnership deed and settled the long running claim at mediation a week before trial to divide the assets and to sell the premises.
Acted for the CEO and subsidiary of a vehicle hire business against the liquidator of the holding company in relation to a multi-million euro claim, following the collapse of the insurance business in Greece.
Advised a Gibraltar based company on defending a multi-million-pound claim by a Big 5 accountancy firm for services to construct an IT platform for the company.
Acted for a trustee and a beneficiary in a long running dispute against the deceased’s wife and to remove the professional trustee; settled shortly before trial with the appointment of a new trustee.
Advised a corporate client on a three year multi-million-pound shareholder dispute, involving merged High Court and petition 994 proceedings. The case settled after the start of a five-week part remote/part High Court trial.
Advised CSC on the major NHS National Programme for IT. The scale and complexity of the £3 billion project presented significant legal and commercial challenges on a daily basis.
Led a team on the case, EDS v National Air Traffic Services Limited to recover the project costs of £25m.
Advised Balfour Beatty on complex contractual issues following a failed £27m transfer and implementation project. The dispute settled without the issuing of proceedings.
Acted for the US international defence contractor, General Dynamics in a multi-million-pound dispute in relation to the supply of software control units for the Spanish MOD.