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Hugh H. Campbell QC
Queen's Counsel : 1983
Year Of Call : 1969
FCIArb : 1986
Chartered Arbitrator : 1999
Areas of practice
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Experience
Hugh Campbell QC has acted (and continues to act) in almost every conceivable type of injury and disease case, including lung disease, vibration damage, allergic and contact reactions, medical negligence, industrial accidents arising in a multitude of circumstances, road traffic accidents, offshore oil and gas accidents, injury arising from breach of the Consumer Protection Act, physical and psychiatric injury, and valuations of every kind of personal injury damage. He has appeared at many Fatal Accident Inquiries, and acted as Senior Counsel for Trades Unions and victims and their families in the Piper Alpha Inquiry, and for most of the claimants in the subsequent personal injury / death arbitrations.
Hugh Campbell QC was Senior Counsel in the Inner House decision (Currie v Kilmarnock and Loudoun District Council 1996 SLT 481) which paved the way for the House of Lords endorsement of the relative inviolability of Jury Awards, and he settled for Scottish law the troubled question of foreseeability as a necessary ingredient of liability under the Factories Act s.29, which remains relevant under the EC six-pack Regulations: see Mains v UniRoyal 1995 SLT 115.
Hugh Campbell acts exclusively for pursuers, and has a particular interest/involvement in proper preparation of cases from an early stage, so that settlement is rendered more likely. In light of his success in doing so, there are few reported decisions in cases at first instance. The last few years have seen him in only a few Outer House appearances: see, e.g., Johnston v Edinburgh City Council 2007 CSOH 171, and Valentine v MOD 2010 CSOH 40, in each of which he was successful, but each of which had to be fought only because of the intransigence of the defenders' advisors.
It is not appropriate for Hugh to name the parties in the very large number of cases which he has been instrumental in settling before Proof in the past few years, but they have included several arising from the Stockline Disaster, several from the double fatality at Pennyvenie Opencast Mine, the test case in Scotland on the unlawful retention of body tissue, cases of neonatal brain damage, and cases of severe physical and / or psychiatric injury, as well as a myriad of more run-of-the-mill claims. He is frequently called on to advise as to the valuation of claims, including in circumstances in which he is asked to give a second opinion where other advisers have already given views.
On a lighter note, he was proud to be asked, with his wife, to open Antigua Carnival in 2010, when both of them were granted honorary citizenship of Antigua and Barbuda as a mark of gratitude for their 'exuberant dancing' and their support for the Carnival over many years.
