ENGLAND & WALES Trends and Developments Contributed by: James Lynch, Maltin PR
England and Wales remains one of the world’s most prominent jurisdictions for both litigation and arbitration following the UK’s departure from the EU. The reputation of London’s com- mercial courts for impartiality and independence is reflected in the international appeal, with them handing down a higher value of judgments than either New York or Singapore, and English law underpinning multiple billions of pounds of con- tracts, trades and deals. The Law Society of England and Wales has stated that legal services are worth GBP60 billion to the United Kingdom’s economy, and the knock-on impact of the juris- diction’s legal appeal into other sectors cannot be underestimated. While the widespread use of English law for contracts leads to strong M&A and commercial law sectors, the more visible side of legal Lon- don is the booming litigation market. Whether they are contractual disputes, collective actions, defamation proceedings or high-value divorce proceedings, London hears some of the largest cases, which naturally comes with an intense level of scrutiny from the media and the public. The international nature of many of the disputes results in attention from media in other jurisdic- tions, with resultant impacts on the reputations of international litigants. Major Cases The strength of London’s litigation market is high- lighted by the decision of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to bring a claim contesting the result of a London-seated arbitration in the London High Court. In a seismic decision, The Hon. Mr Justice Knowles found in October 2023 that the initial arbitration result had been obtained by fraud, overturning the USD6.6 billion arbitration award against Nigeria (which, by 2023, totalled USD11 billion including interest). Mr Justice Knowles did not shy away from highlighting the failures that
he found to have taken place in the underlying proceedings, which placed the piercing glare of the industry on arbitration processes that are intentionally shrouded by privacy. Though rais- ing questions about English arbitration in the short term, such commitment to protecting the longer-term performance of the British legal sec- tor highlights exactly why the jurisdiction attracts such high-value and contentious matters. A willingness to deal with previous findings of courts and tribunals that were procured by wrongdoing can also be seen in other cases. In March 2024, the High Court ordered that two earlier judgments – one of the High Court and the other of the Court of Appeal, be set aside having been “procured by fraud”. The underly- ing case, Ras Al Khaimah Investment Authority v Farhad Azima, had commenced in 2016 and since inception had seen allegations of hack- ing against the claimant by the defendant. The eventual judgment against Ras Al Khaimah Investment Authority highlighted that the courts will not tolerate extensive wrongdoing in bring- ing claims in the jurisdiction, with a worldwide freezing order being granted after the Investment Authority fled the jurisdiction and repeatedly refused to comply with costs orders against it. In a further rebuke of potential misuse of the Eng- lish courts, Mr Justice Calver found in favour of Russian billionaire Oleg, Deripaska, who sought to secure the disclosure of an allegedly forged report that had been deployed against him in a dispute with Vladimir Chernukhin. The case was brought against Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sul- livan, who acted for Chernukhin. Quinn Emanuel sought to argue that the identity of the firm which provided them with the report was protected by legal professional privilege, which was rejected in a judgment that found that it was “strongly arguable” that the report was forged to deceive
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