(The following guest post is contributed by Kartikey Mahajan, who is a dispute resolution lawyer with the Singapore office of Clifford Chance) The Convention on Choice of Court Agreements was completed on June 30, 2005 (“Hague Convention”), and came into effect on 1 October 2015. Currently, Mexico and EU have acceded to it, while United States and Singapore have signed the Convention. The...
Exclusive and Non-Exclusive Jurisdiction
We have discussed the judgment of the Supreme Court in Swastik Gases on the construction of jurisdiction clauses. Its conclusion there is no rule of law that a clause cannot confer exclusive jurisdiction unless it uses words of exclusion (“only”, “exclusive” etc) is plainly correct. But this gives rise to a further question: how should the courts actually decide whether a particular clause does...
Double Actionability, Substance and Procedure in Indian Law
The UK Supreme Court (Lord Sumption; Lord Mance concurring) today gave judgment in an important case, Cox v Ergo Versicherung AG (‘Cox’), involving three questions of private international law and some ancillary points relating to the doctrine of mitigation. The Indian courts, faced with similar (even identical) questions, have had to apply old common law rules that have been legislatively...
Enercon v. Enercon: Indian Supreme Court on arbitration/conflict of laws
The Supreme Court of India in Enercon (India) v.Enercon GmBH (Civil Appeals 2086 & 2087 of 2014; judgment dated February 14, 2014) has decided several important questions pertaining to the law of arbitration and private international law. To summarize, the Court has held: i. ...
The Singapore Court of Appeal’s Important Judgment in Astro
Occasionally, it is evident the moment one encounters a judgment that it is likely to become a classic in its field. The recent decision of the Singapore Court of Appeal in PT First Media TBK v Astro (“Astro”) undoubtedly belongs in this category. The judgment of Sundaresh Menon CJ is rich in scholarship and likely to become the first port of call for a common law court seeking guidance on the...
The Enforceability of Guarantees in Contravention of Indian Foreign Exchange Law
The choice of a law to govern a contract and a court to resolve disputes arising out of it is—naturally—fundamental in many ways. One of these is that a defence otherwise available may be lost, if one law does not contain it and the conflicts rules of the forum lead to the application of that law in preference to the law that does. Another is that different jurisdictions take different views...
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