Goodhead: Focus is not on the past
Tom Goodhead, who was ousted last year as the boss of Pogust Goodhead (PG), is leading efforts to wrestle control of the case away from it, he confirmed yesterday.
“My return is about serving the clients and ensuring that hundreds of thousands of people have the representation they deserve,” he said in a statement.
There was an indication that he was involved when Bailey Glasser International (BGI) – a new joint venture between an English law firm run by former PG staff and US firm Bailey & Glasser – announced at the start of the month [1] that the client committee last week decided to change solicitors.
PG is challenging its authority [2] to do this and an expedited hearing is due [3] in three weeks’ time.
BGI is a trading name of Edward McCourt & Co, a City law firm that has a “commercial cooperation agreement” with Bailey & Glasser.
Since February, Edward McCourt & Co has been owned by Jeremy Evans, who up to that point had been a senior partner at PG. Tom Goodhead was briefly a director of Edward McCourt last November.
Mr Goodhead, a barrister, set up what was originally called SPG Law [4] in 2018 in Liverpool and initiated the Mariana Dam litigation the same year
He was pushed out a year ago during a messy public fall-out with allegations flying on both sides.
Mr Goodhead claimed this was because he was resisting pressure from PG’s funder, Gramercy, to accept a settlement he thought would have “vastly undervalued” the dam claim.
As well as former PG partners Jeremy Evans, Faranak Ghajavand and Guy Robson, BGI has instructed senior barristers who have worked on the case since the start of the trial, including Alain Choo Choy KC and Andrew Fulton KC.
BGI said that, in total, more than 15 lawyers with experience on the case were joining.
Mr Goodhead said: “It is an extraordinary honour to return to this case. My focus is not on the past, nor on a dispute between law firms.
“It is on the people affected by Mariana, on the justice they have been waiting for over a decade, and on ensuring that the case is in the strongest possible position going forward. I feel an enormous responsibility to help conclude what we started eight years ago.”