Category: Uncategorized
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Res Judicata and Special Statutes
The rapid proliferation of Tribunals in India has perhaps masked an allied, and yet facially less controversial feature of adjudication – the growth of special statutes and the creation of jurisdictional courts to resolve disputes arising out of those statutes. Facially, no constitutional vice attaches to such statutes – indeed, it is often the ordinary…
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Companies Bill to be Deferred
A few weeks ago, newspaper reports had suggested that the Companies Bill, 2009 may be presented in amended form during the winter session of Parliament and that it may even be enacted by the end of the year. That was somewhat intriguing considering the magnitude of the discussions before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance…
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Incorporation of Contractual Terms by Reference
Last week, an interesting issue of contractual interpretation fell for the consideration of the United Kingdom Court of Appeals in Malone v. British Airways, [2010] EWCA Civ 1225. The Court was called on to decide circumstances in which terms may be incorporated into a contract from other related agreements or documents, leading it to some…
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UK Supreme Court on Non-Signatory Parties in Arbitration: Part II
(Continued from Part I which is available here) We can now briefly turn to the judgment of Lord Collins. Lord Collins elaborated the position on broadly similar reasoning. On the issue of the standard of review to be adopted, he observed, “The principle that a tribunal has jurisdiction to determine its own jurisdiction does…
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UK Supreme Court on Non-signatory Parties in Arbitration: Part I
We have previously discussed issues surrounding privity in arbitration agreements; and in a recent post, Shantanu looked at a recent decision of the Supreme Court of India on the point which lays down the proposition that an award cannot be enforced against a party merely by virtue of its association with the matter or the…
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Two Global Indicators: Measuring India’s Performance
Doing Business Doing Business 2011, a co-publication of the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation, was released earlier this week. As far as India’s position is concerned, nothing significant has altered compared to its ranking in last year’s report. Of a total of 183 countries covered in the report, India ranks 134 (one place…
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Privity in Arbitration Agreements
The issue of privity to an arbitration agreement has been the subject of much controversy, especially in the context of the grant of interim measures under section 17 (by the arbitral tribunal) and section 9 (by the Court). In SN Prasad v. Monnet Finance, the Supreme Court had occasion to revisit this very issue, albeit…
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More Hurdles for LLPs
As we have previously noted on this Blog, the popularity of limited liability partnerships (LLPs) has not met with expectations since introduction of that business vehicle in April 2009. While the Government has taken certain steps to boost the utility of LLPs, such as by considering the possibility of foreign investment into LLPs discussed in…
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Software and Royalty: Further Controversies
In an earlier post, I had stated: “The judgment in TCS as also the subsequent decision of the ITAT in Sonata, (2007) 106 T.T.J. (ITAT) 797, make it abundantly clear that payments for shrink-wrapped software would not be chargeable to tax in India. V. Niranjan, in a recent article published in the Journal of Business Law describes the decision in Sonata thus: “The…
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Changes to Capital Markets Regulations
On October 25, 2010, SEBI announced a number of changes to regulations governing capital markets. 1. Public offerings. A new regime is being established for IPOs by insurance companies. Rather than issue a new set of guidelines for that industry, SEBI has decided to apply the ICDR Regulations, 2009 along with additional industry-specific disclosures such…
