Richard Matthews

Partner

Practice areas

• Automotive
• Commercial litigation
• Food and drink
• Health and life sciences
• Industrial engineering
• Litigation and dispute management
• Product liability and product recall
• Retail

Practice notes

Richard has been a partner in our Litigation and Dispute Management practice group since 2001 and has experience across a broad range of commercial and contractual disputes. Richard joined the firm in 1998, after 8 years in London and Hong Kong handling major international litigation and arbitration.

Richard heads the firm's pan-European product liability practice. He has considerable experience in advising major global businesses on their responses to product incidents and associated product liability actions, the defence of cross-border and multi-party proceedings as well as claims involving insurers, supply chain disputes, the implementation of product recalls and crisis management generally. Richard is a named expert for both the Legal 500 and Chambers legal directories as well as listed as one of the World's Leading Product Liability Lawyers in Euromoney's Expert Guide. He is the co-author of the Management of a Global Product Recall in the 2019 International Comparative Legal Guide to Product Liability and previously authored the on-line Butterworths LexisNexis guidance for practitioners on product liability

Richard is also one of the lead partners in the firm’ s contentious procurement practice which is ranked Tier 1 in Chambers UK legal guide. He has worked extensively for Utilities, Central Government Departments and publicly funded bodies. In particular, he has supported clients in relation to major IT and infrastructure projects to minimise the risk of challenge and, where necessary, defending procurement challenges and Judicial Review applications often under intense public scrutiny. Richard in adept at securing the early and favourable resolution of cases. However, he is a very experienced and tenacious litigator, who brings a forensic eye and the full armoury of contentious skills to the fore in securing the best outcome for his clients.

Richard's experience includes:

(i) Acting for lenders in relation to the PIP Breast Implant litigation;

(ii) Acting for a leading electronics company in a global consumer recall and regulatory notification programme concerning over 800,000 domestic appliances;

(iii) Acting in a number of high profile cross-border food contamination recalls, including benzene in carbonated drinks, migration of ink from food packaging, Sudan 1/Para Red, dioxins in Irish pork and the melamine in milk incidents;

(iv) Advising manufacturers and suppliers of various medical devices (including breast implants, gastric bands and patient lifting devices) on defending personal injury claims, regulatory compliance and CE marking issues.

(v) Acting for a leading utility in relation to the procurement for its £2 billion AMP7 capital works investment programme;

(vi) Acting for a Central Government Agency in relation to a flagship IT infrastructure project procured through Competitive Dialogue;

(vii) Acting for a rail sector utility in defending a High Court challenge to a major £2bn framework agreement including a successful application to lift the automatic suspension;

(viii) Defending a challenge to the appointment of the preferred bidder in a c.£1.2 billion waste infrastructure procurement; and

(ix) Defending an expedited procurement challenge and parallel Judicial Review proceedings in relation to the appointment of an automated diagnostics software provider to support the UK Government’s mass Covid-19 testing programme.