Cases Commercial Disputes
Judgment Date: 17 May 2013
A public house operator had more than a fanciful chance of establishing at trial that its agent had been dishonest and in breach of fiduciary duty by acting for another party in finding suitable property that it might well have wanted to buy. Further, most of a statement by a defence witness based on facts derived from documents and containing argument and submissions would be struck out as an abuse, as the witness had only indirect knowledge and was not an expert.
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Judgment Date: 17 May 2013
The principle that it would be an abuse of process to challenge a decision in earlier proceedings where that would bring the administration of justice into disrepute was wide enough to encompass the situation where a person had not been a party to the earlier proceedings but only a witness.
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Judgment Date: 17 May 2013
The court was prepared to hear a contemnor in opposition to a bank's application for a final charging order over a property, where the property was not the subject of the court order in respect of which the contemnor was said to be in breach.
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Judgment Date: 25 Apr 2013
Where a bank sought its costs incurred in debt and possession proceedings against individual and corporate defendants, costs were awarded on a joint and several basis and an indemnity basis. The case was run was on the basis that effectively all the defendants were in it together and were presenting a common front, and the contract referred to an indemnity in respect of all costs.
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Judgment Date: 17 Apr 2013
A claimant was entitled to rescission of an agreement to invest in a project to buy land in Cambodia because he had been induced to enter into the agreement by fraudulent misrepresentations including representations that other investors had contributed funds and that there was a binding agreement to sell the land to a property developer at a profit.
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Judgment Date: 05 Apr 2013
When answering a questionnaire as part of a due diligence exercise prior to entering into a series of contracts, a defendant was guilty of fraudulent misrepresentation when he stated that he had not been disqualified as a director, knowing that answer to be false. Alternatively, he was reckless and negligent in failing to check the accuracy of the answers.
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Judgment Date: 26 Mar 2013
A financier had not been entitled to serve a formal demand as it had, at the time of the demand, held excess funds that had been wrongly deducted as capital repayments from a borrower's bank account, which meant that no sums were in fact due at the relevant time.
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Judgment Date: 14 Mar 2013
The "value clean" principle established in relation to the 1992 ISDA Master Agreement had not been preserved by the changes to the closing out provisions introduced by s.14 of the 2002 ISDA Master Agreement. The provisions of a side letter agreement entered into alongside certain Intercompany Transactions were therefore "material terms" which had to be taken into account within the definition of "Close-out Amount" in the 2002 ISDA Master Agreement.
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Judgment Date: 13 Mar 2013
A bank's claim in debt under a facility agreement succeeded and it was entitled to possession of properties charged to secure the defendants' indebtedness under the facility. A no set-off clause in the facility excluded any counterclaims that the defendants might have had.
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Judgment Date: 12 Feb 2013
It was appropriate to allow rectification of a Tomlin order made in a bank's action to enforce charges over certain land, because the order did not reflect the parties' common intention as to the bank's rights.
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Judgment Date: 30 Jan 2013
Transfers of property had not provided for the seller's positive covenants, concerning the grant of leases conditional on the obtaining of planning permission or on the exercise of an option, to be enforceable against the buyer. The covenants were not annexed to the property under the Landlord and Tenant (Covenants) Act 1995 s.3, as the Act did not apply to options to take a lease that had not been exercised, or to conditional agreements to grant a lease.
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Judgment Date: 16 Jan 2013
An order that a Kazakhstan law firm pay interim costs stayed on condition that it pay that sum into court immediately, otherwise its pending appeal would be stayed. It was also just for the firm to pay a sum into court as security for the respondents' costs of the appeal.
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Judgment Date: 04 Dec 2012
The court was required to determine the validity and effectiveness of a number of contracts between companies through which two businessmen had managed their financial affairs.
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Judgment Date: 30 Nov 2012
Although various warranties included in a share sale agreement did not constitute representations and there had therefore been no misrepresentation by the sellers of the shares in the company, the inclusion of inappropriate amounts in the company accounts as turnover gave rise to breaches of the warranties.
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Judgment Date: 31 Aug 2012
The claimant Russian businessman failed to prove any binding agreement that he was to have an interest in a Russian oil company or a Russian aluminium company.
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Judgment Date: 27 Jul 2012
The claimant had established that a painting bought by it at an auction by Christie's was a forgery; it was entitled to a refund under a limited warranty given by Christie's, but the latter's conditions of sale barred the claimant's claims in negligence and misrepresentation.
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Judgment Date: 19 Jul 2012
On the proper interpretation of a loan agreement and accompanying trust deed between a commercial lender and pension scheme trustees who had participated in the lending, the trustees were entitled to recover their contribution in full where a borrower had defaulted and there was a shortfall in the security.
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Judgment Date: 13 Jul 2012
An ex-employee had acted in breach of the terms of a confidentiality clause in his service contract when he disclosed sensitive commercial information to a third party.
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Judgment Date: 21 Jun 2012
This claim was for declarations as to the meaning of a contract for the sale of development land as regards payments to be made out of a contractual retention towards environmental remediation works, and an alleged estoppel against the claimant seller.
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Judgment Date: 15 Jun 2012
On the proper construction of a contract, a company was entitled to payment for procuring the introduction of two companies.
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