- Ranked in Tier 1 for Inquests and Inquiries in – The Legal 500 (2025)
- Ranked Band 1 for Inquests & Public Inquiries – Chambers and Partners (2024) – 4 years ranked
‘Janine is a quality barrister.’ – The Legal 500 (2025)
‘A junior who stands alongside KCs and shines extremely brightly.’ The Legal 500 (2024)
‘Janine is highly collaborative, and has a persuasive advocacy style.’ Chambers & Partners (2024)
‘Janine has excellent client skills, provides clear and strategic advice and is a robust advocate.’ Chambers & Partners (2024)
‘A barrister who shines in court. She has all the strength, ability, knowledge and charm of a KC.’ The Legal 500 (2023)
‘Janine is approachable and quite practical and will try to resolve things. A very pleasant advocate, who is persuasive with the coroner and is likeable and approachable.’ Chambers & Partners (2023)
‘She’s a very solid performer and a strong advocate.’ ‘She is an approachable, helpful and reassuring barrister.’ Chambers & Partners 2022
‘Janine is a safe pair of hands. She is thoroughly prepared and extremely knowledgeable regarding deaths in custody. She is extremely capable in court.’ The Legal 500 (2022)
‘A highly accomplished advocate who works extremely hard for clients” “Frequently undertakes Regulation 28 reporting and Article 2 matters, representing the Treasury Solicitor in an Article 2 inquest into a prisoner’s death which involved far-reaching systemic failings.’ – The Legal 500 (2021)
‘Janine is very personable, and her ability to condense complex legal points into simple terms for all concerned shows how acute her knowledge and skills are. Her strengths include her attention to detail and client care skills.’ – Chambers & Partners (2021)
Janine Wolstenholme is a highly sought after barrister. She is in particular demand for high profile, complex, and sensitive cases. Many have linked matters including civil claims, judicial reviews, and regulatory and disciplinary proceedings, with clients benefitting from the continuity of representation she provides across the various jurisdictions.
She is extremely experienced in the coroners’ courts, appearing country-wide, representing the interests of the state, large corporations, small businesses, professionals, individuals, and bereaved families, as well Counsel to the Inquest.
Janine’s experience ranges from short, natural causes of deaths to lengthy cases involving several interested parties, with the majority of her instructions invoking Article 2 and requiring a jury. Regulation 28/PFD issues routinely feature.
She has a particular interest in cases involving children and protected parties, including obstetrics and fetal medicine, but has significant experience in the full range of cases, including: care and nursing homes, custody/detention, educational settings/contagion, DOLS, domestic homicide, medical treatment (or lack of), mental health, neglect, road traffic collisions, substance and alcohol misuse, workplace deaths.
Selected cases
- Acting for a company responsible for care homes where a vulnerable resident on an interim NHS placement sustained fractured humerus following poor manual handling by staff
- Acting for NHS Trust in an inquest where a patient with chronic pain who had knowingly become addicted to, and taking, excessive amounts of opiate based medication for a number of years.
- CTI in an inquest where a young woman took her own life, when gate keepers to an inpatient unit failed to adequately asses her increased and apparent risk of doing so.
- Acting for the registered manager of a care home following a death of a vulnerable resident whose wheelchair caught fire from a dropped cigarette.
- Acting for the family of a man crushed at work when a conveyor fell from a trailer during a transhipment operation
- Acting for a private school following the death of two students a few weeks apart.
- A complicated three-week inquest in respect of a death in custody involving, inter alia, mental and physical health concerns, language barriers, and bullying.
- Acting for a nurse, as an individual, in respect of a death in a nursing home following administration of the wrong medication.
- The successful defence of a claim for judicial review, brought against a coroner, for his refusal to conduct an Article 2 inquest and sit with a jury, in respect of the death of a very young child who passed away having developed septicaemia.
- Acting for the Probation Service in a six-week inquest into the death of a woman killed by her partner who had previously served life for the murder of his ex-partner.
- An inquest into the death of a man who passed away whilst in a specialist residential unit undergoing a voluntary detoxification programme.
Janine also provides training, and has delivered sessions to clinical staff at NHS hospital trusts.
Janine has a nationwide practice and is happy to travel to accommodate her clients’ needs, as well as deliver training and seminars to clients at their premises.
Public Access
Janine may accept Public Access work, where she can be instructed directly by a member of the public rather than a solicitor.
Contact Janine’s clerks
Madeleine Gray on 0113 202 8603
Public Law
“She’s a very solid performer and a strong advocate.” “She is an approachable, helpful and reassuring barrister.” Chambers & Partners 2022
“Janine is a safe pair of hands. She is thoroughly prepared and extremely knowledgeable regarding deaths in custody. She is extremely capable in court.” Legal 500 (2022)
Janine has significant experience in this area having acted for a range of central government departments, local authorities, the NHS and its commissioners, and other public bodies, or those carrying out public functions, for many years.
She accepts instructions in relation to a range of Public and Regulatory matters including duties, powers, judicial review, quashing of inquisitions in the coroners’ courts, misconduct, and misfeasance in public office, and as well as appearing in the County and High Courts, appears before a number of specialist tribunals, including the Health, Education and Social Care Chamber, SENDIST, and School Admissions Appeals Panels.
Example cases
- Acting for coroner where a challenge to his decision to leave unlawful killing to a jury was dismissed by the Divisional Court. For more information click here
- Acting for a Senior Coroner in a judicial review to quash the inquest and order a fresh inquest upon it coming to light evidence had been withheld from the court.
- Representing Ofsted in a multi-day appeal against a decision to remove a child-minding licence following serious misconduct and regulatory breaches.
- Acting for local authorities and the NHS and its commissioners defending challenges concerning special educational needs, including allegations of a failure to statement or provide an EHC Plan, failure to identify, or properly identify, a child’s needs, and a failure to provide adequate provision.
- Acting for a Senior Coroner to quash his own decision under the Coroner’s Act 1988 upon new evidence coming to light.
- Policy advice including a bespoke provision for children with significant needs, and families caring for those children, where the local authority had been found, by the relevant regulator, to be in breach of the statutory rules and procedures. She has also advised on the provision of facilities at school for transgender pupils.
- Successfully defending an application for judicial review against a Senior Coroner for his refusal to invoke Article 2 in respect of young child who died of septicaemia.
- Acting for a child in a successful appeal against the failure to allocate a place at a particular secondary school, on the grounds of maladministration when applying the academy’s policy.
Janine has a nationwide practice and is happy to travel to accommodate her clients’ needs, as well as deliver training and seminars to clients at their premises.
Public Access
Janine may accept Public Access work, where she can be instructed directly by a member of the public rather than a solicitor.
Contact Janine’s clerks
Janine Wolstenholme is an experienced advocate. She undertakes advisory, drafting and advocacy work, across all aspects of casualty litigation. Clients enjoy a high level of service and particularly appreciate her forensic, holistic and tactical approach.
Janine Wolstenholme has many years’ experience in casualty work acting for Claimants and Defendants. Her practice includes injury, both bodily and psychiatric, and consequential loss arising out of clinical negligence, personal injury, employers’ liability, disease, occupiers’ liability, highways, product liability, accidents abroad, and motor claims (including MIB). She has a genuine and long-standing interest in claims involving secondary victims and nervous shock having completed her undergraduate dissertation in this field.
She has experience of low value claims through to large loss actions following surgery (emergency, orthopaedic/routine and cosmetic), inadequate post-surgery care and treatment, delayed and failed diagnosis, neglect, as well as claims involving compulsory detention and mental health. Janine has a particular interest in incidents resulting in loss of life, particularly those concerning children, protected and vulnerable parties.
She undertakes work at all stages from initial advice through to JSMs and trial, including inquests (coroner and jury), and fully contested multi-track trials and appeals lasting several days in the High Court.
A significant proportion of Janine’s current practice includes acting for NHSLAs, insurers, local government and, since her appointment as Junior Counsel to the Crown, Regional Civil Panel, in 2010, she is regularly instructed by the Crown and various State departments, both ministerial and non-ministerial.
Janine accordingly has an acute understanding of the wider, potentially lasting, implications that may arise in any given case, whether it relates to policy or because of political and media interest and scrutiny and approaches every case with such matters in mind.
Janine has a significant coronial practice and is accordingly able to offer continuity of service from a very early stage in proceedings and across jurisdictions.
Experience includes, for example:
- Instructed to defend a claim for damages arising out of the baby ashes scandal.
- Defending a claim for damages (pleaded up to £5m) for psychiatric injury and associated losses (including loss of business) following alleged misfeasance in public office and malpractice.
- Defending a claim for judicial review, brought against a coroner, for his refusal to conduct an Article 2 inquest and sit with a jury, in respect of the death of a very young child who passed away having developed septicaemia.
Janine has a nationwide practice and is happy to travel to accommodate her clients’ needs, as well as deliver training and seminars to clients at their premises.
Public Access
Janine may accept Public Access work, where she can be instructed directly by a member of the public rather than a solicitor.
Contact Janine’s clerks
Senior Clerk – Andy Reeves on 0113 213 5252
Talia Webster on 0113 202 8609