Readers will undoubtedly be broadly familiar with the crisis which struck the tin market of the London Metal Exchange in October 1985 when the International Tin Council (ITC), the government cartel supporting the price of tin, defaulted on its massive purchasing commitments. The litigation arising from that collapse is just beginning to filter through into the courts and one application of considerable interest has just been before the Court of Appeal. The decision highlights the powerful effect of Ord. 29, r. 10 of the Rules of the Supreme Court now that interim payments are obtainable in matters arising outside the law relating to personal injury. It will be argued that the decision has very important practical consequences and that the Court of Appeal’s wide interpretation of the Rules presents substantial difficulties of principle.

The parties were both substantial traders in metals, including tin, on the London Metal Exchange (LME) and elsewhere. At the time of the ITC default the open position between the parties was that Rayners had purchased, by a number of contracts over the three-monthly forward period permitted on the Exchange, a substantial tonnage of tin worth many millions of pounds. After the collapse of the talks designed to rescue ITC in order to alleviate the consequences to both cus