Charles is joint head of chambers at Gatehouse Chambers (formerly known as Hardwicke) in London. He was appointed as Queen’s Counsel in 2018 and his practice is in complex, sensitive and high value personal injury and clinical negligence litigation. He won Personal Injury Silk of the Year at the Legal 500 UK Bar Awards 2023 and Clinical Negligence Silk of the Year at the Chambers & Partners UK Bar 2024 Awards ceremony. He was the elected Chair of the Personal Injuries Bar Association from 2022 to 2024. He sits as a Deputy High Court Judge and is an accredited Mediator.
Charles is an accredited advocacy and ethics teacher for new practitioners through Inner Temple, of which he is a Governing Bencher. He is passionate about striving for greater equality, diversity and inclusion at the Bar through outreach programmes including Pathways to Law, PASS and school insight events, mentoring and shadowing.
Charles is highly rated for his forensic skills, strong negotiating and persuasive advocacy. His practice is in claims arising from catastrophic brain and psychiatric injuries, spinal fractures, amputations and fatalities. He is known for his expertise in cases involving allegations of exaggeration and dishonesty. He has been at the cutting edge of legal developments in the field of psychiatric injury/secondary victim litigation, fatal accident claims and civil procedure: e.g. Charles was successful in the Supreme Court appeal in Paul v Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust [2024] UKSC 1, described as the “Tort case of the century” by Professor Dominic Regan.
Charles is regularly instructed in international litigation often involving cross-border issues. He represents major international insurers and Claimants/Plaintiffs in high value injury and clinical negligence cases being litigated in, for instance, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Bermuda, and Gibraltar.
His UK litigated cases also often have an international dimension with recent instructions having crossborder issues involving a range of jurisdictions including the USA, the Caribbean, Brazil, India, Poland, France, Romania and Belgium. He also has experience acting as an expert witness on UK law for foreign courts.
Charles is on the Editorial Boards of both Kemp & Kemp: the Quantum of Damages and the Personal Injuries and Quantum Reports.
