St Vincent European General Partner Ltd v Robinson & Ors

Under the Recast Judgments Regulation, a party domiciled in England is ordinarily sued in England unless an exclusive jurisdiction agreement allocates the dispute to another Member State. The court has no discretion to disapply those rules.

A judgment of a Member State court on jurisdiction must be recognised and its findings of law and fact cannot be reviewed on their merits. A party may exceptionally be bound by a foreign judgment despite not being a party to the particular application that produced it, where a broad, merits-based assessment shows sufficient commonality, participation, reliance and fairness.

St Vincent brought proceedings in England concerning alleged breaches of a shares pledge agreement and related equitable and restitutionary claims. Three defendants applied for declarations that the English court lacked jurisdiction because the pledge agreement gave exclusive jurisdiction to the courts of Cyprus.

The same parties and claims had previously formed part of proceedings in the Nicosia District Court. That court had set aside the proceedings for lack of jurisdiction, first in a reasoned interim decision and later by an order made on the applicants’ own application. The issue was whether those decisions bound the applicants and required the English court to treat the claims as outside the Cyprus jurisdiction clause.

1. The application was dismissed. The applicants were domiciled in England, so Article 4 of the Recast Judgments Regulation gave the English court prima facie jurisdiction. Article 25 could displace that jurisdiction only if the claims fell within the exclusive Cyprus jurisdiction clause in the pledge agreement.
2. The rules governing jurisdiction allowed no discretion. The applicants had to show clearly and precisely that the parties had agreed to submit these disputes exclusively to the Cyprus courts.
3. The September 2015 order of the Nicosia District Court bound the applicants because they had themselves applied for it. The order necessarily determined that the claims made in the English proceedings did not fall within the Cyprus jurisdiction clause. The wider scope of the Cyprus proceedings was irrelevant.
4. The earlier interim decision also bound the applicants in the exceptional circumstances. Although they had not been parties to the specific application, they were parties to the underlying Cyprus action, could have joined the application, and actively relied on the interim decision to obtain the later order. Having taken its benefit, they could not adopt a contradictory position in England.
5. The foreign judgments were entitled to recognition under the Council Regulation (EC) number 44/2001. The English court could not review their substance or the accuracy of their findings of law or fact. The applicants’ jurisdiction challenge therefore failed.

First-instance decision. No appellate history was stated in the judgment.