Manoj Vaghela features in The Times: Lawyer of the Week and The Law Society Gazette: Lawyer in the news
min readManoj Vaghela, Partner, features in The Times: Lawyer of the Week and The Law Society Gazette: Lawyer in the news for his work on the Greggs v Zurich Covid-19 insurance trial.
Manoj represented Greggs in a legal battle between insurers and high street retail giants seeking to claim hundreds of millions in compensation under their business interruption policies due to Covid-19. The court backed Greggs’ argument that it was entitled to multiple insurance limits for business interruptions caused by the pandemic, despite insurers’ argument that it was only entitled to one limit.
Please see a snippet of the Law Society Gazette Q&A below:
Career high:
Seeing people I’ve helped, trained, and mentored over the years flourish in partnerships, insurance companies and major banks, and maintaining friendships with them.
Thoughts on the case:
It was important that the insured and the insurers behaved sensibly and responsibly to obtain answers to some very hard examination questions which they had to put to the judge. The most significant issue from our perspective was whether we were entitled to one insurance limit of £2.5m or multiple limits. Of wider interest to the market was whether government support should be seen as a windfall or deducted from insurance losses.
A feature of these cases was the mutual respect and cooperation shown by all the lawyers involved in the case. Hard-fought, but important for getting some sort of certainty.
The wider implication is that hundreds of these policies have been sold to corporates, who can balance their books better now we have the answer, subject to appeal of course!
Links:
Click here to read the full interview in The Times (subscription required).
Click here to read the full interview in The Law Society Gazette.
Read the full press release here.
