Kelvin Hastings-Smith is Counsel and Manager of the Litigation department in Bermuda. His practice includes all aspects of commercial litigation with an emphasis on employment and immigration, fraud, asset tracing and anti-money-laundering issues. Kelvin is a member of and leads the firm’s Employment and Immigration team and is active in Employment and Immigration compliance issues and all matters involving employer and employee relations. He joined the firm in 1993. Prior to that he was a partner and head of commercial litigation at a London firm of solicitors.
Although his practice is predominantly employer based, Kelvin also acts for employees. He regularly advises on the formation of employment contracts, policies and procedures and employment disputes. He advises both employers and employees on redundancy, unfair dismissal and wrongful dismissal cases and appears regularly in all courts and tribunals and in arbitrations in Bermuda.
Examples of recent clients and cases include anton piller and mareva injunctions, jurisdiction challenges, e-commerce litigation (including Bermuda’s first internet defamation action), wrongful and unfair dismissal, human rights such as discrimination and judicial review issues.
Kelvin has been a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives since 1976. He became a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in 1995. He is an executive member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in Bermuda and speaks regularly at conferences on ADR, fraud, anti-money-laundering issues, employment law and immigration law.
He is also a frequent author and presenter on these issues, on which he also advises companies wishing to locate in Bermuda. In 1999 Kelvin became a CEDR accredited mediator. He has mediated a range of disputes, including commercial, employment, family and trust disputes, and is often instructed to sit as arbitrator in such disputes.
Kelvin is a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, LCIA (The London Court of International Arbitration), the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, the ICC FraudNet Network and the American Bar Association.