Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
RESTRAINT OF FOREIGN PROCEEDINGS
SNIAS v. Lee
The purpose of this note is to examine the law on the obtaining of injunctions to restrain parties from taking proceedings in foreign courts where the ground relied on is approximately that it is improper for proceedings to be taken in such courts. It will deal with the law at it applies in cases not affected by the Brussels Convention on Jurisdiction and Judgments, but will offer a brief word on that aspect of the law at the end.
With the decision in Spiliada Maritime Corporation v. Cansulex Ltd.,1 the House of Lords seems to have settled the law relating to stays of English actions on the ground of forum non conveniens, and also the issue of how to account for the appropriateness of different fora in deciding whether to grant leave to serve out of the jurisdiction under R.S.C. Ord. XI, r.1. Notably absent from the judgments in Spiliada was any reference to the rules by which an injunction may be granted to restrain a party from pursuing foreign proceedings. Hints had been dropped in two recent cases2 that this area of the law was due for redevelopment, and in Société Nationale Industrielle Aerospatiale v. Lee Kui Jak
3 this redevelopment took place. The case was decided by the Privy Council on appeal from the courts of Brunei, but the air of finality about the judgment surely means it can be taken as the statement of English law on the subject. True it is that judgments of the Privy Council are technically of only persuasive force in an English court. But Lord Goff observed4 that in this area the law of Brunei was identical to English law; and the fact that the other four judges (Lords Keith, Griffiths and Mackay, and Sir John Megaw) made no expression of dissent makes it idle to contend that the status of SNIAS v. Lee is open to doubt in an English court.
1. The decision in SNIAS v. Lee
In 1980 a helicopter crashed in Brunei, killing 12 people, including the husband of the plaintiff Lee Kui Jak. The deceased had been resident in Brunei and carried on his extensive business interests from there. After the report of a Governmental inquiry, the widow-plantiff Lee commenced actions in Brunei against the helicopter’s operator, Bristow Malaysia, and against the manufacturer of it, SNIAS, a French corporation. She also began an action in France against SNIAS (but later
1. [1987] A.C. 460.
2. Bank of Tokyo v. Karoon [1987] A.C. 45n; South Carolina Insurance Co. v. Assurantie Maatschappij “de Zeven Provincien” N.V. [1987] A.C. 24 (see the judgments of Lords Goff and Mackay).
3. [1987] 3 W.L.R. 59. Hereinafter SNIAS v. Lee.
4. At p. 70.
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