Diarmuid Laffan

“Very good, very sensible and an excellent advocate.” – Legal 500

“His approach is incredibly professional and very strategic, distilling matters for lay clients.”– Legal 500

Diarmuid is ranked as a Leading Junior in Sports Law by the Legal 500.

Recent examples of Diarmuid’s work in this area include:

• Acting on behalf of the defendant in the pending case of Frederik Tylicki v Graham Gibbons QB-2019-000545. The claimant seeks £6 million in damages in respect of catastrophic injuries he sustained during a riding accident, alleging that the accident was caused by dangerous riding on the part of the defendant. The case raises important questions about the scope of the duty of care owed by one participant in a dangerous sport to another, and the relationship between that duty to the rules of the game.
• Acting on behalf of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in the case of Susan Mears v RSPCA QB-2020-00222, in defending a claim for the lost value of a competition horse that was euthanised in the RSPCA’s custody under the Animal Welfare Act. The Claimant is also suing for the return (or alternatively the value) of two other competition horses seized from the Claimant’s farm.
• Acting for a national betting company in a dispute as to whether a number of large bets, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, are payable under the company’s standard contractual terms.
• Advising the owner of a stud farm on claims in negligence against Northern Irish and English veterinary surgeons who produced pre-purchase veterinary reports on a competition horse subsequently bought by the client.
• Successfully defending a national governing body in a challenge to its refusal to admit an athlete to its high performance programme.
• Successfully defending a professional athlete against charges of possession and attempted use of a prohibited substance at a multi-day hearing before the National Anti-Doping Panel.
• Successfully prosecuting an underage athlete on behalf of a national governing body for use of a prohibited substance, leading to a 4-year ban under the WADA Code.
• Acting for the Appellant before the National Anti-Doping Panel in Hosseinpoor v UKAD (SR/NADP/667/2016), in which the Appellant was granted a 50% reduction in his two year additional sanction for training in breach of an existing anti-doping ban.