Arbitration
Stephen specialises in commercial and property litigation. He is an ACTAPS registered contentious trust and probate specialist.
Stephen is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.
Before starting to practise at the Bar in 1982, Stephen was employed for several years by international trading companies. In Hong Kong, he worked for a subsidiary of the Inchcape Group, spending time in various trading departments dealing with the import and export of various merchandise. In Johannesburg, he was a trainee metals trader, dealing with the buying and selling of metals and their transportation around the world.
He obtained a postgraduate certificate in Sports Law from King’s College London in 2001 and is a director of the British Association for Sport and Law. He is a co-author of the chapter on image rights in Sport: Law and Practice, edited by Lewis and Taylor.
He is an ACTAPS registered Contentious Trusts and Probate Specialist.
He studied Russian and Swedish at university.
His practice as a barrister encompasses a range of commercial, property, contentious trusts/probate and professional negligence litigation.
Stephen has arbitrated, among others, many package holiday claims under the ABTA scheme and claims in respect of homebuyer reports under the RICS scheme.
Mediation
Stephen has been a CEDR accredited mediator since 2001 and is a member of CEDR’s Mediation Panel. He has carried out mediations in a wide range of civil sectors, including commercial, property and contentious trusts. He is on the Mediation Panel of the Kuala Lumpur Regional Centre for Arbitration.
Recent notable cases:
Grijns v Grijns [2025] EWHC 1413 (Ch)
12/6/25 Master Bowles, sitting in retirement, found that the Claimant had failed to make out the constituent elements of proprietary estoppel and that the conduct of the promisee towards the promisor, at least where that conduct pertains to the property in respect of which the promisee seeks enforcement of a promise, is a matter properly to be taken into account in determining whether the promisor, in resiling from a promise has acted unconscionably.
SZ Solicitors v Bharj 6/8/24 County Court at Central London HHJ Monty KC Westlaw [2024] 8 WLUK 65
In assessing a firm of solicitors’ recoverable costs for acting on behalf of clients in litigation, where the firm had not properly recorded its time and the bill of costs had been based largely on estimated figures, the court applied the Solicitors Act 1974 Pt III s.74(3) and reduced the costs by 20% to reflect those matters. Although the sum recovered was over one fifth less than the sum claimed, the one-fifth rule did not apply to its claim because the court had carried out a common-law assessment in respect of which there was no equivalent to the one-fifth rule. The court considered the rules and authorities concerning the situation where a witness is not sufficiently fluent in English to give evidence in English.
Interests: Fitness, languages and football.
Professional Memberships
- Chancery Bar Association
- Property Bar Association
- Commercial Bar Association
BSB & VAT Information
Registered Name: Stephen James Harvey Boyd
VAT Number: 397016043
