Abhinav Parameshwar

Full Profile

Abhinav advises both domestic and international corporate and insurer clients on a wide range of cyber risk matters. He has experience advising clients in their response strategy to cyber security incidents including regulatory compliance and investigations, threat actor engagement, liaising with law enforcement, co-ordinating forensic cyber investigations, undertaking data mining reviews and defending third-party claims arising from breaches. He works closely with the global team on cross-jurisdictional incidents and has experience coordinating notifications with data protection regulators.

Abhinav has a range of litigation experience including acting for clients in defending claims for defamation, breach of confidence, misuse of private information, malicious falsehood, and breaches of data protection rights/obligations. He acts in relation to reputation management by advising on media law from a defamation, privacy and data protection perspective. He also has experience dealing with Data Subject Access Requests in contentious and sensitive contexts. 

Abhinav has been involved in several reported cases as set out further below. 

Experience

• Cyber: acting for SMEs and large multi-national companies in responding to major cyber incidents involving ransomware, phishing attacks, business email compromises, social engineering attacks and/or payment fraud. 
• Data protection: acted for the defendants in Ashley v Amplifon UK Ltd [2021], a claim for breaches of data protection rights arising from the inadvertent disclosure to the wrong employee (with the same first name) of an employment contract. The claim was transferred to the county court providing a further indication that the High Court discourages unnecessarily complex data protection claims being issued in the High Court for the purpose of excessive costs recovery.
• Data protection, misuse of private information, and breach of confidence: acting for large corporations in relation to litigated claims with customers and/or employees arising from allegations that the defendant unlawfully processed and/or misused customer information.
• Data protection and misuse of private information: acted for a defendant pre-action in a high value claim (comparable to the highest figures awarded in privacy actions to date) arising from a high-profile criminal investigation.
• Data protection and misuse of private information: acting for a major private British infrastructure and property investment business (with billions in assets) following a large-scale data breach.
• Defamation and malicious falsehood: acted for the defendants in Kostakopoulou v University of Warwick and others. The defendants were awarded summary judgment on the basis the words complained of were published on occasions protected by qualified privilege of leave and license and the claimant could not establish malice. The defendants successfully challenged the claimant’s applications for (i) permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal and (ii) permission to reopen the court’s decision to refuse permission to appeal.
• Defamation: acted for the defendants in Abdulrazaq and others v Trustees of the Exeter Mosque. The defendants were awarded summary judgment on the basis that the words complained of were published on occasions of qualified privilege of (i) duty-interest and (ii) reply-to-attack and that the claimants could not establish malice. The decision established that ‘reply-to-attack‘ qualified privilege applies in a ‘reply-to-retort’ context as analysed in Lexis Nexis.
• Defamation, malicious falsehood, and conspiracy: acted for the defendants in Jabbar and another v Aviva Insurance UK and others (a claim for damages in excess of £1.1 million) to successfully challenge the claimants’ application for permission to appeal the High Court’s decision to hand down the substantive judgment where a settlement was reached prior to handing down and where publication was in the public interest. The decision confirmed absolute privilege applies to answers to CPR Part 35 requests under the pre-action protocol and vindicated the defendants from serious allegations of conspiracy made against them.
• Sports: acted for the Rugby Football Union in relation to a high-profile claim arising from the update to its Gender Participation Policy preventing transgender women from playing female contact rugby.