David Johns
David specialises in insurance law, particularly professional negligence, workers compensation, personal injury and large scale property damage claims.
David provides wide ranging advice and direction to general insurers at litigation and pre-litigation stages with a focus on presenting commercial and strategic options in respect of both defended and subrogated claims.
In the workers compensation sphere, David acts for self-insured employers, assisting with the vagaries of the new legislation and the constant and complex interplay between workers compensation and industrial law.
David has been listed in Doyle’s Guide for Professional Indemnity in 2015. David has also been named in Best Lawyers™ Australia for Insurance Law, Personal Injury Litigation and Product Liability Litigation law.
Experience
David’s recent experience includes:
- Major insurer: Seeking and, after some days in trial, arguing issues of policy interpretation, engineering principles, business interruption and betterment, obtaining by way of settlement a multi-million dollar recovery for a major insurer and its insured winemaker following the collapse of the winemaker’s storage tanks;
- Security services provider: Representing a security services provider in claims made by former detainees of government immigration detention centres and the government itself in respect of allegations of inadequate medical facilities and mistreatment and in relation to the government allegations of breach of contract;
- International underwriters: On behalf of international underwriters, defending claims of negligence and breach of statutory duty by landowners against a power supplier, on the basis that its failure to maintain and repair an infrastructure component resulted in devastating bushfires;
- Government department: Representing a government department and successfully defending at first instance a “stress claim” by a worker, on the basis of the employer’s reasonable administrative action; and
- Local insurer: Defending on behalf of a local insurer, the hosts of a teenage party, a claim made by the guardians of a visitor who, after an alleged assault, developed chronic schizophrenia.