Mark specialises in real estate litigation and dispute resolution, and contentious landlord and tenant matters. He has acted on many commercial lease issues, including lease renewals, dilapidations, rent reviews, contested alienations and service charges , as well as the wider range of property disputes such as adverse possession and squatters, rights of way, restrictive covenants and land contract breaches, including references to arbitration. Mark has particular experience in connection with riparian and foreshore rights and telecoms issues.
Mark acts for institutional landlords in connection with substantial property portfolios and interests, as well as occupiers in the retail sector in connection with their national property interests.
Mark is an enthusiastic proponent of alternative dispute resolution, and in particular mediation, having conducted a number of mediations that have succeeded in settling a wide range of real estate disputes. Mark is a regular speaker at property related seminars and conferences including for RICS and Property Managers Association, as well as Lexis Nexis. Mark is a member of the Property Litigation Association and has gained Higher Courts advocacy rights.
Experience
Examples of experience include advising:
- Successfully defending High Court applications to overturn arbitrator's award on rent review, and an arbitrator's award on a property contract interpretation dispute
- Settling a disputed claim concerning the right to lay an undersea telecoms cable over a section of coastline
- Defending and successfully compromising a First Tier Tribunal claim in respect of ownership of the bed of a tributary to the River Thames
- Acting for a sub occupier in the important dilapidations case of Hammersmatch v Saint Gobain
- Acting for a national retailer in five arbitrations in connection with the interpretation of a real estate purchase contract and its implementation
- Acting for The Crown Estate as intervener before the Supreme Court in the leading case of prescriptive fishing rights, Loose v Lynn Shellfish
- Defending the owner of a harbour bed against claims to a prescriptive mooring easement by riparian owners.
