Commercial Disputes Weekly – Issue 22115 October 2024

Commodities
The London Metal Exchange was held by the Court of Appeal to have acted lawfully when it cancelled all nickel futures trades on 8 March 2022 because of concerns about extreme price movements. Claims were brought by traders whose trades had been cancelled for the profits they would have made on the cancelled trades. The LME’s power to cancel trades was incorporated into the terms and conditions of trading and was a matter of the LME’s discretion based on their experience of such exceptional price movements and the appropriate response. The situation was urgent and so it was impractical to hold an open meeting before taking action. There had been an opportunity for the market to make representations before the cancellation and so the procedure had been fair and the decision rational.
R. (on the application of Elliott Associates LP) v London Metal Exchange [2024] EWCA Civ 1168, 7 October 2024

Sovereign Immunity
The Court of Appeal has upheld a first instance decision that the Kingdom of Bahrain was not entitled to claim state immunity in respect of claims for damages for harassment brought against it by individuals. The claimants asserted that Bahrain had, through its agents outside the UK, installed spyware on the claimants’ computers in the UK and that this was harassment which had caused psychiatric injury. The court rejected Bahrain’s submission that the acts had taken place outside the UK – the remote manipulation from abroad of a computer located within the UK was an act within the UK. Further, the definition of “personal injury” for the purposes of section 5 of the State Immunity Act 1978 did include psychiatric injury.
Shehabi and another v Bahrain [2024] EWCA Civ 1158, 4 October 2024

Maritime
The Commercial Court has held that the purchasers of consignments of copper that turned out to be worthless concrete blocks could not claim damages from the owner of the vessel. The claimants had obtained judgment against the shippers of the cargo in Dubai, but the judgment remained unsatisfied. The claim centred on the fact that the verified gross mass of the containers was only 30-40% of the declared weights. The court held that the weight of a container would not be apparent from a reasonable examination of the container and that the shipowner had no reason to consider that the shippers would have provided fraudulent data to them. The shipowners were therefore not in breach of the duty under Art III rule 3(c) of the Hague Rules to carry out an inspection of the apparent order and condition of the cargo. The court did state that where a carrier knew that there was a substantial discrepancy between the declared and verified weights, there was a duty not to issue an unclaused bill of lading if the bill was being used as an instrument of fraud. However, on the facts the shipowner did not have the requisite knowledge.
Stournaras Stylianos Monoprosopi Epe v Maersk A/S [2024] EWHC 2494 (Comm), 7 October 2024

Arbitration
The Commercial Court has discharged anti-suit and anti-enforcement injunctions that were granted to restrained proceedings in Liberia that were in breach of an ICC arbitration agreement. There had been a dispute as to the seat of the proposed arbitration and the ICC ultimately decided that the appropriate seat was Toronto. The English court no longer had procedural jurisdiction over the arbitration and it was thus appropriate to discharge the injunctions.
Investcom Global Limited v PLC Investments Limited and others [2024] EWHC 2505 (Comm), 3 October 2024

Should you wish to discuss any of these cases in further detail, please speak with a member of our London dispute resolution team below, or your regular contact at Watson Farley & Williams: