The Companies Act, 2013 introduces some important changes to the company law regime in India. In this post, we shall discuss one such new feature: the class action. The provisions governing class actions are introduced through s. 245 of the Act. These provisions are included under ‘Chapter XVI – Prevention of Oppression and Mismanagement’: however, class actions are evidently not the same as...
Supreme Court on Jurisdiction Clauses
A recent decision of the Supreme Court, Swastik Gases v. Indian Oil Corp. (Civil Appeal 5086 of 2013, decision dated July, 3, 2013), examines the position of Indian law dealing with exclusive jurisdiction clauses. The Court was concerned with a case where an agreement was executed in Kolkata, while all the other elements of the cause of action had taken place in Jaipur. The agreement...
New York Courts’ Long-Arm Jurisdiction
The Harvard Corporate Governance Blog has a post discussing a recent judgment that confers significant long-arm jurisdiction to the New York Courts. Here is the summary: On November 20, 2012, the New York Court of Appeals issued an opinion that is of substantial importance to international banks and financial institutions that maintain and use correspondent banking accounts in New York. In Licci...
Fuerst Day Lawson: S. 50 Arbitration Act, and “consolidating legislation”
On Friday, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court (Alam and Lodha JJ.) gave judgment in Fuerst Day Lawson v Jindal Exports [hereinafter “FDL”]. The judgment contains a careful and comprehensive examination of a long line of authorities, and an authoritative analysis of two very important issues in arbitration law and civil procedure—whether a Letters Patent Appeal [“LPA”] is maintainable in...
Restraining the Breach of a Negative Covenant
It is common knowledge that an injunction is granted only if the applicant satisfies the court on the three-pronged test of prima facie case, irreparable injury and balance of convenience. While there is controversy over the scope of some of these elements, notably prima facie case, and over the relationship between these elements, there are also circumstances in which an applicant may be able to...
Res Judicata, Venture Global and s. 48 of the Arbitration Act
It was commonly believed until the well-known decision of the Supreme Court in Venture Global that s. 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 did not apply to foreign awards. We have discussed at length the subsequent development of the law on implied exclusion and a challenge to a foreign award. A single judge of the Delhi High Court, in Anita Garg v Glencore, recently considered a...
Exclusion of Jurisdiction of Civil Courts under the SEBI Act
Legally India has made available certain expert witness statements filed before US Courts in the class action litigation concerning Satyam, which was recently settled. One of the witness statements, by Mr. Sandeep Parekh, makes an interesting point; but I am not entirely sure of the tenability in law of that point. Mr. Parekh’s declaration / statement as an expert witness is available here...
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 civil court that is designated as the...
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