Cases International & Offshore
Judgment Date: 26 Apr 2022
The High Court of Trinidad & Tobago has handed down judgment in Namalco v. Estate Management and Business Development Company Ltd (EMBD) CV 2016 01522, finding an unlawful means conspiracy between mega contractor Namalco Construction and ex-senior officials of the Government entity EMBD to inflate prices for the development of roads and housing sites for ex Caroni workers on the islands.
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Judgment Date: 04 Oct 2021
Richard Morgan QC appeared with Walkers’ partner Rosalind Nicholson and Andrew McLeod (One Essex Court) on behalf of the First Respondent instructed by Walkers’ partner Murray Laing (with Blake Morgan as Privy Council Agent) and David Mumford QC and Ryan Turner appeared with Appleby’s Andrew Willins on behalf of the Second Respondent (with BDB Pitmans as Privy Council Agent).
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Judgment Date: 14 Jan 2021
Following his ruling that his failure to provide the minority with the Company’s financial statements as required by the Company’s articles constituted unfair prejudice, Leon J had ordered that the majority shareholder buy the shares of the minority. The Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal upheld his finding of unfair prejudice but overturned the buy-out order on the ground that requiring the majority shareholder to provide the financial information was the appropriate remedy. The Privy Council restored the buy-out order. Leon J had not made any error of principle and the Court of Appeal had not been entitled to interfere with the exercise of his discretion when considering what relief to grant.
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Judgment Date: 19 Oct 2020
The Isle of Man’s Staff of Government Division has allowed an appeal and made a disclosure order against a non-cause of action defendant to a freezing order and interveners who were contending that a freezing order should be discharged. In doing so, the Court affirmed the flexibility of the jurisdiction to make ancillary orders to support freezing relief. This is an important case for showing that common law courts are able and willing to order disclosure of documents prior to a discharge hearing of freezing injunctions in appropriate cases.
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Judgment Date: 01 Apr 2020
The Court of Appeal of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal against the discharge of a Black Swan freezing injunction for want of jurisdiction over the second respondent, Dr Cho. In doing so, the Court of Appeal affirmed the applicability of the Privy Council’s judgment in Mercedes-Benz AG v Leiduck [1996] 1 AC 284 in the Territory of the Virgin Islands: in short, it is not possible for proceedings seeking only freezing order relief against a foreign respondent to be served on that respondent out of the jurisdiction.
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Judgment Date: 09 Feb 2018
In relation to a shipbuilding contract entered into by a Mexican buyer and governed by English law, a decree made in Mexico that the tender process leading to the contract was a nullity did not deprive an arbitrator who had determined a dispute in the seller's favour of substantive jurisdiction
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Judgment Date: 03 Jul 2014
The court determined as preliminary issues that there was no principle of ex nihilo nil fit in English law preventing the court giving effect to arbitration awards granted by the International Commercial Arbitration Court in Russia despite their having been set aside by the Moscow Arbitrazh Court, that interest on the award could not, as a matter of Russian law, be recovered under the Russian Civil Code s.395, and that interest on the sums claimed could be recovered under the Senior Courts Act 1981 s.35A.
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Judgment Date: 29 Jan 2014
In determining a rent review, an arbitrator was not required to set out every reason he had as to the weight to be given to each comparable property.
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Judgment Date: 04 Jul 2013
In awarding costs under the Arbitration Act 1996 s.61, an arbitrator was not under obliged to compare a Calderbank offer with a valuation under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 s.34 as of the date of the offer, but rather retained a broad discretion to award costs under s.61 which was totally fact dependent.
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Judgment Date: 25 May 2012
An order of a German court appointing a preliminary liquidator was a judgment opening insolvency proceedings for the purposes of recognition by the English courts under Regulation 1346/2000.
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Judgment Date: 24 Aug 2011
An action against a company was stayed under the Arbitration Act 1996 s.9 where the same matter had been referred to arbitration, but an action against the company's parent on a guarantee was not stayed since there was no arbitration agreement and the claimant bank was entitled to enforce the guarantee, if it could make good its claim, regardless of the claim against the principal debtor.
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Judgment Date: 14 Jun 2011
A decision of the Amsterdam Court of Appeal gave rise to an issue estoppel preventing the defendant from denying that decisions of the Russian courts annulling arbitration awards were the result of a partial and dependent judicial process.
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Judgment Date: 08 Apr 2011
It was appropriate to discharge a temporary undertaking limiting the use by receivers of documents disclosed to them in connection with arbitration proceedings. Arbitration confidentiality or privacy was not absolute and the receivership's purpose in getting in and preserving complex commercial assets would be hampered by the requirement either to give notice or to apply to the court on every occasion where the need for use of the disclosed documents arose.
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Judgment Date: 21 Oct 2008
The terms of the New York Convention 1958 and the Arbitration Act 1996 did not prevent part enforcement of an award in an appropriate case provided the part to be enforced could be ascertained from the face of the award and judgment could be given in the same terms as those in the award.
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Judgment Date: 17 Apr 2008
A paradigm situation in which the court, exercising its jurisdiction under the Arbitration Act 1996 s.103(5), had to reconsider its earlier decision to adjourn the decision on enforcement of an arbitration award was where there had been a significant relevant development in the proceedings before the supervisory court.
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Judgment Date: 11 Sep 2006
The applicant company, which had applied to continue a freezing order granted against the respondent, had failed to satisfy the relatively high burden of establishing a real risk that the respondent would dissipate its assets.
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Judgment Date: 10 Nov 2005
The warranty that a solicitor gave was that he had a client who had instructed him to assert or deny the claims made in the proceedings against the opposing party. He did not warrant that the client had the name by which he appeared in the proceedings. As a matter of principle it would not be right to impose strict liability on a solicitor for incorrectly naming his client.
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Judgment Date: 08 Nov 2005
An arbitrator's decision, that on the true construction of a lease supplementary rent was required to be deducted from his determination of the yearly rental value, was obviously wrong.
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Judgment Date: 30 Jun 2005
There could be no appeal under the Arbitration Act 1996 s.69 against the findings of fact in an award, since under s.69(3)(c) of the Act the facts had to be accepted for the purpose of any application for permission to appeal; it was not open to the court to find that, because there was no evidence justifying the findings of fact, there had been an error of law under s.69.
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Judgment Date: 08 Oct 2004
An arbitration award in respect of a rent review was remitted for reconsideration where a serious irregularity had occurred because the arbitrator in applying a discount for onerous lease terms had departed from the agreed basis upon which the case was put to him.
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