Simon Hartley

Areas of Expertise

Simon has substantial rent review experience working for landlords and tenants both within and outside the central London markets. He advises on professional negligence claims, rights of light, dilapidations, service charge issues, development disputes and emergency injunctions.

Simon has considerable expertise in acting for landlords, tenants and insolvency practitioners in relation to real estate disputes in an insolvency context. This includes liquidation, administration, company voluntary arrangements (CVAs), bankruptcy, schemes of arrangement and receivership. He also acts in relation to the enforcement of security held over property assets.

Additionally, Simon handles all aspects of contentious real estate management work, including lease renewal, tenant default, restrictive covenants and easements and environment and planning disputes.

Experience

Simon has acted for clients on a range of contentious matters:

• Advising an international investment bank in relation to cross border insolvency and transactional structuring issues arising out of the multi-million pound acquisition of its European headquarters.
• Representing the landlord on a rent review arbitration regarding the lease of a large retail site on Oxford Street, London.
• Acting for the owner of one of the world’s most prestigious retail and leisure locations in relation to professional negligence claims and property management issues.
• Representing an insurer and its insured firm of surveyors in relation to the successful settlement of a major professional negligence claim arising from the attempted exercise of a number of lease break options.
• Acting for an international corporate in a professional negligence claim against its solicitors arising from the invalid exercise of a number of lease break options.
• Advising a property investment fund on investing in non-performing loans secured over commercial, residential and buy-to-let property.
• Successfully defending a developer facing a challenge to the validity of a light obstruction notice.
• Securing the retention of a right to run a railway line over land subject to a compulsory purchase order for one of the UK’s largest corporates.
• Acting for a leading corporate in an arbitration and parallel independent expert determination concerning a sale of land and advising on an associated professional negligence claim.
• Representing the successful party in the Court of Appeal in the important land registration case Barclays Bank v Guy [2008] EWCA Civ 452.
  

Client Sectors

Simon represents clients in many commercial sectors including real estate, retail, hotel and leisure and healthcare.

Membership

Law Society
Property Litigation Association