At Carter Lemon Camerons, our experienced team of solicitors is available to provide English law services to clients in South Africa.
Our head of litigation and arbitration, Seamus Smyth, graduated and qualified as an attorney in South Africa and has for many years maintained a close working relationship with South Africa’s legal profession. He receives referrals and instructions from South African clients direct and from attorneys throughout South Africa, large and small, on behalf of clients who need assistance with an English matter.
Typical work for South African clients:
- Litigation/arbitration
- Asset tracing
- Company/commercial law
- Administration of estates
- Disputed estates
- Trust disputes
- UK property investment for both individuals and businesses
- Administrative/formal matters such as serving edictal citations and attending to notarial execution of documents
Our team takes pride in a friendly, professional and plain-language approach to the matters that are brought to us and will work to achieve the best possible outcome for all our clients. We are sensitive to funding difficulties clients have resulting from an adverse Rand/Pound exchange rate.
Seamus Smyth visits South Africa regularly and welcomes the opportunity to meet clients and attorneys face to face (with a preference, at the weekend, for meeting on a golf course!). When asked he will deliver a short, light-hearted overview of the ins and outs for South Africans of instructing English solicitors.
Seamus has postponed his March 2020 trip and has not yet made plans for another trip in 2020. He plans to be in South Africa in mid/late March 2021
Email address is unchanged, SeamusSmyth@cartercamerons.com and South African cell phone is 071 258 3295.
Meet the team
Seamus Smyth is head of litigation and arbitration. His practice is primarily commercial with an emphasis on arbitration, financial services and work for South African and Italian clients.
Transactions
His reported cases include RH Green & Silley Weir v BR (limitation period against 3rd party), de Bry v Fitzgerald (security for costs), Hartt v Newspaper Publishing (libel concerning a work by Michelangelo), Pearson v Sanders Witherspoon (valuation of loss of chance), Siebe Gorman v Pneupac (status of consent orders), Senate Electrical v NTL (liability of an employee for acquisition warranties) and Bendell v Smith & Others (a successful recovery action by a lender on a shared appreciation mortgage equity release – the only such case to go to trial).
Recently involved in enforcement of foreign arbitration awards, claims arising from the banking upheavals since 2007, a successful claim against a high street bank resulting from a banking error and a successful claim against estate administrators and their solicitors for wasting the estate funds on irresponsible litigation.
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Educated (BA, LLB, Wits) and first qualified as an attorney in South Africa, he requalified in England in 1977, took an LLM at UCL and a Diploma in International Arbitration at QM, and became an FCIArb. He is chairman of the British South African Law Association (for the second time), chairman of Michaelhouse UK Trust, chairman of Global Leadership Foundation (UK), a former President of the London Solicitors Litigation Association and Trustee and President of Town Malling Cricket Club (established in 1827!). He was until 2012 a Visiting Senior Lecturer in International Commercial Arbitration at London Metropolitan University. When work and domesticity permit he plays some cricket and more golf (but – which is immediately obvious – not nearly enough).