English High Court

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The Court’s ruling supports the general principle that costs follow the event.

By Oliver E. Browne and Robert Price

In Andrew Martin, Nicholas Greene, Coban 2017 LLP (formerly named Strutt & Parker LLP) v. Michael Harris [2019] EWHC 2735 (Ch), the English High Court held that any arbitration award as to costs stood or fell with the substantive award. Therefore, if the substantive award was overturned by the court, the costs award would cease to have effect, regardless of whether the costs have been dealt with in separate award.

In a geopolitically significant case, the English High Court opined on important provisions of the EU sanctions regime.

By Charles Claypoole, Robert Price, and Olivia Featherstone

The judgment of the English High Court in Ministry of Defence & Support for Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran v. International Military Services Limited [2019] EWHC 1994 (Comm) constitutes the latest decision in a long-running dispute between the Iranian Ministry of Defence, (MODSAF), and the UK Ministry of Defence (via its subsidiary, International Military Services (IMS) that has been litigated in various courts and tribunals since 1990.

This latest judgment concerns whether IMS is liable to pay interest on the amounts an arbitral tribunal awarded to MODSAF in 2001, or whether IMS is prohibited from paying such interest by EU sanctions laws (specifically, EU Regulation 267/2012 – as amended).

The judgment carries great legal importance, as judicial pronouncements on the interpretation, application, and operation of EU sanctions laws are relatively rare.

By Paul Davies, Michael Green, Samuel Pape and Charles Rae

In a recent decision, the High Court has ruled that Unilever plc (Unilever), the ultimate holding company of the Unilever Group, does not owe a duty of care to protect the employees and residents of a tea plantation owned and operated by a Kenyan subsidiary from ethnic violence carried out by armed third party criminals.

This decision is the third time in less than 12 months that an English court has considered a jurisdictional challenge to proceedings brought by foreign claimants seeking to hold a UK domiciled parent company liable for the alleged acts and omissions of an overseas subsidiary. Similar challenges were made in Lungowe & Ors v Vedanta Resources plc & Anor and more recently in Okpabi & Ors v Royal Dutch Shell plc & Anor with the courts reaching opposite conclusions on their respective facts. Our blog on the decision in Okpabi can be found here.

These cases are significant in the context of multinational corporate groups and the circumstances in which a parent company may be held liable in negligence for the actions and omissions of its subsidiaries.

By Jumana Rahman and Hayley Pizzey

Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft v Liquimar Tankers Management Inc [2017] EWHC 161 (Comm)

Summary

The English High Court has held that asymmetric jurisdiction clauses are exclusive jurisdiction clauses for the purposes of the Recast Brussels Regulation[1] (the Recast Regulation).

Where claims are issued by disputing parties in the courts of two or more EU Member States, the usual court first seized rule applies. This means that all courts (other than the court in which the first claim was issued) must stay their proceedings until the court where the proceedings first in time were brought has determined whether it has jurisdiction. However, the Recast Regulation provides an exception to this rule. If the parties have agreed in writing that a particular Member State’s courts are to have exclusive jurisdiction over the dispute then the court first seized rule does not apply. Instead the court upon which the parties conferred exclusive jurisdiction shall first determine whether it has jurisdiction, and all other courts shall stay any proceedings before them pending that determination.

Following the ruling in Liquimar Tankers,[2] it is now clear that the English courts also consider that asymmetric jurisdiction clauses displace the usual court first seized rule.  

By Oliver Browne and Hayley Pizzey

Anyone engaged or interested in the electronic disclosure process should pay close attention to the landmark decision handed down earlier this year by the English High Court in Pyrrho Investments Ltd v MWB Property Ltd (‘Pyrrho’),[1] the first ever decision on the use of predictive coding software.

What is Predictive Coding?

Electronically stored information (‘ESI’) often constitutes the majority, if not all, of the entire universe of information held by parties to litigation. The digital nature of our lives and businesses leads to large volumes of ESI being created, duplicated and stored in a variety of formats, locations and jurisdictions.

Parties to litigation may face difficulties in determining how much ESI they have or where it is located, or they may simply have too much to sift through. In past years, parties have relied on simple keyword or Boolean searches (using operators such as AND, OR and NOT in a search) to sift through data, but these methods of search can be unreliable, subject to human error and simply under- or over-inclusive. Predictive coding is a powerful tool that seeks to address these issues. It has the potential to augment human decision making with computer aided pattern recognition.

By Simon Bushell

Much like the English Scheme of Arrangement which has become a popular debt restructuring solution for international debtors, the English High Court is an attractive forum for insolvency litigation thanks to the potent combination of wide-ranging powers available to Insolvency Practitioners (IPs) under the Insolvency Act 1986, and the increasing availability of litigation funding arrangements in the London market.

Transactions which prefer related party creditors or which are at an undervalue or otherwise result in serious prejudice to creditors may be clawed back in the right circumstances. Many of these remedies are capable of having extra-territorial effect.  In other words they can be used to support the efforts of an overseas IP who is recognised by the English courts, and may be sought against a defendant who is outside the jurisdiction.