Peter appeared in his first contested IT case in 1984 (defending a software house against a claim in the QB for damages brought by its motor dealer customer), and for very many years has specialised in and been recommended in the directories for litigation over alleged defects in bespoke and customised software. He represents central and local government, other users, or software houses.

He was shortlisted for IT Silk of the Year 2007 for the Chambers UK Bar Awards. Recent descriptions in the directories include the following:

“an advocate who is "hot on the regulatory side." Susman recently represented a local authority on a software dispute” (Chambers & Partners, 2011)

“‘incredibly experienced’” (Legal 500, 2010)

"only seems to take on work of a fiendish complexity ... exceptionally talented chap ... tackles social services law, construction and general commercial work when he is not advising on IT" (Chambers UK, 2010)

"a real heavyweight silk with great experience" (Legal 500, 2009)

"a lawyer who tends to work on large IT project disputes including failed application cases and website problems .... is not overly showy but has the gift of speaking and getting an audience to listen to him" (Chambers UK, 2009)

Peter devised the form of order known in some quarters as a ‘Susman Order’, which avoids some of the expense and difficulty of a search and seizure order by requiring the defendant to lodge with its own solicitor mirror images of all its computer software with a directory listing the number of bytes in each file (to prevent subsequent interference), pending an application for prompt disclosure of this material to the claimant’s expert.

He has also acted as arbitrator, mediator and early neutral evaluator in IT disputes. From 2006 to 2010 he chaired the Bar’s IT Panel, which gives advice to the Bar on IT matters and represents the Bar in liaising with government and other professions on IT matters. He has lectured and written on IT and the law (e.g. ‘What tends to go wrong in IT contracts’). He is a member of the Society for Computers and Law.

• F v D (2011): advising a government department on its possible remedies where the software house has failed to deliver on time under a multi-billion pound contract
• TH Baker & Co Ltd v SDK Jewellers Ltd (TCC 2011) acting for Internet seller of jewellery and watches in obtaining an interim injunction against a rival who in extracting (“scraping”) the client’s price data from its Website in order to undercut those prices was alleged to be causing the client’s Website to crash and the client to lose sales accordingly
• SAM Business Systems Ltd v Hedley & Co [2002] EWHC 2733 (TCC 2002): acting for software house resisting counterclaim for defective transaction settlement software supplied to firm of stockbrokers – scope of exemption clause
• Psychometric Services Ltd v Merant International Ltd [2002] FSR 147 (Ch 2001): acting for software house resisting providing source code for website software in advance of payment 
• Anglo Group Plc v Winther Browne & Co Ltd (2000) 72 Con LR 118 (TCC): acting for the supplier of distribution software sued by a user for scores of alleged defects in standard software -- duties of an expert in an IT case 
• The Boots Company Plc -v- Amdahl (UK) Ltd [2000] All ER (D) 1669, [2000] EWCA 277 (CA 2000) acting for a national retailer suing a supplier for breach of a promise made in the course of tendering for the updating of an electronic point-of-sale system to buy back the system at a discount at the end of the year
  

Peter advises and acts in commercial litigation in both the Queen’s Bench and Chancery Divisions of the High Court, including interim and final remedies for breach of contract; the interpretation and drafting of commercial contracts, and insurance, company law, employment,   property and other issues arising in relation to commercial transactions and disputes.

Representative Cases

• Proctor & Gamble v Ghost Brand Ltd (Ch 2011): acting on behalf of a defendant seeking to uphold its contractual right to use certain trade marks assigned to it by the administrators of a now defunct company 
• Re Z Ltd (2011): advising a company on dismissal of employees for alleged fraud
• JBW Group Ltd v Westminster City Council [2009] All ER (D) 27 (Nov), [2009] EWHC 2697 (QB): acting for the local authority in resisting a claim for compensation for work in progress by certificated bailiffs whose contract to collect parking fines with payment by results had come to an end.  
• Faraday Underwriting Ltd v Reliance Scrap Metal Merchants (Parkstone) Ltd (QB 2010): acting for insurers who had paid the legal costs of defending criminal proceedings against the insured following death of a worker in an explosion at a scrap yard, and who sought repayment from the insured upon learning that the defence had been dishonestly concocted
• Re U Pension Fund Society (QB 2010): advising the Trustees of an overseas pension fund on the commercial aspects of a tax avoidance scheme set up under English law
• T Ltd v Ibrahim  (Ch 2010): acting for a director who disputed liability under a guarantee of the debtor company’s indebtedness to a creditor supplier on the ground that the creditor had deliberately put the debtor company out of business at the behest of some of its other customers, rivals of the debtor company.
  

Peter has been active in consumer credit law since the 1970s, when he conducted a series of conferences to inform and warn lending institutions and others on the implications of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 as it was about to come into force.

A few years later he was engaged to draft documentation for second mortgage lenders, and has since extensively advised upon and has been engaged in drafting documentation to meet the changing requirements of the secondary legislation in this field. His article attacking the poor drafting of one round of secondary legislation, entitled “Another Fine Mess” appeared in [2005] NLJ 770 (20 May 2005).

More recently, he has advised a ‘household-name’ insurer and a building society on problems arising from the failure of each to comply with the legislative requirements, and on the assignment of claims for mis-selling payment protection insurance.

He has appeared in a number of county court cases on behalf of a credit hire company, particularly in the important case of Orley v Viewpoint Housing Association (below).

Representative Cases

• Britannia Car Hire Services Ltd v State Securities Plc (2010 Ch): seeking relief against forfeiture on behalf of an insolvent car hire company whose stock of cars for hire was held on a series of lease-purchase agreements.
• Orley v Viewpoint Housing Association (Gateshead County Court, HH Judge Armstrong, 7 December 2010): impact of Contract Cancellation Regulations 2008.

An example of Peter’s public procurement work has been advising on a tender competition between 5-a-side football promoters seeking the right to use an education authority’s school pitches. More recently he acted on behalf of an incumbent  lift maintenance company in successfully challenging  the local authority’s award of a contract to a rival company; and has advised a charity which contracted with a local authority to tend drug addicts, but lost out to another body in a public procurement tendering exercise.

Lift and Engineering Services Ltd v S  Ltd (TCC 2011): acting for the incumbent lift company when its rival was about to be awarded a contract to maintain the lifts in local authority blocks of flats after apparently concealing previous involvement with failed enterprises and when the tender documents failed to warn of the TUPE implications of a successful bid

Peter has advised and acted in a large number of professional negligence claims, intercluding those against accountants, architects, solicitors, surgeons and surveyors.

Representative Cases

• Trustees of the B Settlement v H Plc (Ch 2011): advising Trustees in relation to a proposed action against investment advisors for negligence in cashing in investments in a particular way, without regard to the loss of the tax advantages of doing it as those investment advisors had originally advised  
• F Ltd v B Ltd (TCC 2011): acting for recycling contractor suing planning consultants for negligence in preparing a planning application for change of user of an industrial site for recycling
  

Peter regularly advises and represents  professionals faced with disciplinary or regulatory proceedings, and professional bodies faced with regulatory issues.

He acts for the defendant solicitors in a series of 3 cases due for trial in November 2011 in which the Legal Services Commission is seeking to recoup legal aid payments on account made up to 20 years previously in cases where no final bill was ever lodged.

He is Vice-Chairman of the Appeal Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England & Wales, in which capacity he chairs panels hearing appeals from that body’s Disciplinary Committee. He is a former member of the Bar Council’s Professional Conduct Committee.   

Representative Cases

• Baxendale-Walker v Middleton [2011] All ER (D) 242 (Apr), [2011] EWHC 998 (QB): acting for struck off solicitor in seeking to resist the striking out of his claims against The Law Society and a firm of accountants for conspiracy and against the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal for misfeasance in public office
• LSC v Ulasi (QB 2011): acting for a solicitor sued for old legal aid payments on account
• Re J (2011): advising a new company, which is taking over certain professional regulatory functions, on data protection issues.
  

Peter was standing counsel to Ofcom in its start-up period from 2003 to 2005, and has knowledge and insight in the area of broadcasting and telecommunications.

Representative Cases

• Re X Ltd (2011): advising the owner of a television channel on the scope and implications of the statutory requirement that a licence holder be a ‘fit and proper person’
• Re T (2007): acting for a religious group that claimed that its character and activities had been seriously misrepresented in a television documentary
• Re I Management Ltd v U Plc (2006): acting for a building owner in its claim that on the proper interpretation of the relevant provisions of the Electronic Communications Code, it was entitled to require a telecommunications company to remove its mobile phone mast from the roof of the building
  

As well as sitting as a Recorder in the Technology and Construction Court to hear construction and engineering disputes (for example, Tunnel Refineries Ltd v. Bryan Donkin Co Ltd and Alsthom SA (1998) CILL 1392), Peter has over 35 years’ experience of advising and acting in court and arbitrations for and against builders, engineers, their employers, and the architects, quantity surveyors and other professionals they engage, including advising a number of hoteliers on allegedly defective newly built swimming pools and extensions, and more recently acting for employers suing builders and architects over faults in a newly built large house in North Yorkshire, and acting for an American in a dispute over the multi-million pound restoration she commissioned of a 17th century house in Mayfair. Peter is often asked to advise on problems arising in the course of building or engineering work that are outside the usual allegations of defects and delay.

• Re B Finance Ltd (2010): drafting deed of assignment by contractor to finance company of any claim that the contractor might potentially have against an architect or surveyor involved in the project, in order to obtain new finance for the project
• Y Ltd v. R Ltd (2010): advising an architect, when the developer by whom he had been engaged required warranties on the quality of his work beyond what he was already obliged to give, how to persuade his professional indemnity insurers to extend cover accordingly
• I Developments Ltd v JK Ltd (2009): acting for builder of an office development in defending a claim for allegedly defective work, and counterclaiming to recover an allegedly wrongly withheld retention
  

Peter is experienced as an arbitrator, mediator and early neutral evaluator, especially in IT cases. He has sat as a Recorder (or Assistant Recorder), in other words as a deputy judge, since 1987 in the specialist jurisdiction of the Technology and Construction Court (a division of the High Court in London) and in civil and criminal cases. He also sits as vice-Chairman of the Appeal Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (chairing panels which hear appeals from the Institute’s Disciplinary Committee).