Darren O'Keefe

Darren is an approachable highly experienced civil lawyer with a practical attitude to litigation also hallmarked by close attention to detail. He is a skilled negotiator in settlement meetings  and a strong advocate in court.  He appears in the County Court, High Court and Court of Appeal.

He has a strong practice in the fields of personal injury and Coroners’ Inquests. He has also over many years undertaken clinical negligence work, as well as civil cases on behalf of the police.

Of the non-police work roughly 75% is for Defendants and 25% for Claimants. Darren has particular expertise in advising and appearing for major UK insurance companies, local authorities and corporate clients in employers’ and public liability litigation involving liability and/or quantum disputes concerning all manner of personal injuries or death. This covers the full range of accidents at work, occupiers’ liability cases, highways claims, motor accident claims (including fraud), industrial disease actions (mostly for work-related upper limb disorders or noise-induced hearing loss), holiday sickness claims; etc.    

The full spectrum of advisory drafting and advocacy is offered, the last a complete service from procedural/interlocutory hearings (e.g. cost and case management hearings, applications to strike out, public interest immunity applications, preliminary hearings on limitation and other issues) to joint settlement meetings and mediations to trial.

In general no case is too big or too small. Although most of Darren’s work has been in the multi-track he also appears regularly in fast track cases. He has several times appeared (without a leader) in high value cases up to c.£3.5m, most such concluding via joint settlement meetings or mediation: but the majority of his work concerns claims worth under £150,000, with many worth less than £50,000.    

His other more occasional fields of practice have included accountants’ and other (non-clinical) professional negligence cases, and some data protection work.  

CFA claims are undertaken in appropriate cases after preliminary consideration of the Instructions.

• PNBA; PIBA