V Ships Limited v Luna Management Corporation & Anor

Sanction for contempt must reflect the seriousness, duration, deliberateness and consequences of the breach. Continuing and intentional refusal to comply with a clear anti-suit injunction, causing substantial prejudice, may justify immediate imprisonment where there is no realistic prospect that a lesser or suspended sentence will secure compliance.

Personal culpability may be attributed to an individual who is in reality controlling a company’s non-compliance, even if another person has formal authority or gives instructions directly. Mitigation may reduce the custodial term, but previous good character and difficult family circumstances do not necessarily justify suspension. A company may be sanctioned by confiscation of its assets where that is the only realistic effective penalty.

The claimant sought sanction against Luna Management Corporation and Lambros Stravelakis following findings that both had been in contempt of court. The contempt consisted of Luna’s continuing prosecution, and failure to terminate, Greek proceedings in breach of a final anti-suit injunction supporting an arbitration award. The court had previously found that the conduct was directed in reality by Lambros.

The hearing concerned the appropriate sanctions, mitigation, and costs. The central issues were Lambros’s culpability and control, whether custody should be immediate or suspended, the appropriate sanction against Luna, and the costs consequences of a defence attributing the conduct to Lambros’s deceased father.

1. Sanction. The court imposed an immediate custodial sentence of 14 months on Lambros and ordered confiscation of Luna’s assets as its sanction.
2. The breach was longstanding, continuing, deliberate and intentional. Lambros had throughout been in reality in control of the Greek proceedings and was personally culpable for Luna’s failure to arbitrate and its breach of the anti-suit injunction. Formal authority held by other persons did not alter that conclusion where they would not have acted to terminate the proceedings without Lambros’s direction.
3. The principal aggravating considerations were the clear nature of the injunction, the high degree of culpability, serious prejudice to the claimant through the costs of foreign proceedings, the absence of remorse or apology, and the absence of any reasonable excuse. The court treated the prejudice caused by forced participation in foreign proceedings as the type of prejudice the anti-suit injunction jurisdiction is designed to prevent.
4. Lambros’s good character and the recent death of his father were accepted as mitigation. They justified reducing an otherwise appropriate sentence of 18 months by about 20 per cent, but did not justify suspension. The court was sure that Lambros had no intention of complying, so immediate custody was the only realistic and proper sentence. If the Greek proceedings were terminated and never reached judgment, the court indicated that partial remission might reduce the sentence to no more than six months.
5. The absence of information about Luna’s assets within the jurisdiction was not a reason to withhold confiscation. There was no order as to costs between the claimant and the estate of Stefanos, but Lambros was ordered to pay the claimant’s costs of the contempt application against Stefanos, together with £410,000 on summary assessment.

The judgment followed the court’s earlier liability judgment in the same proceedings, [2025] EWHC 3329 (Comm), which found Luna and Lambros guilty of contempt of court. The present judgment determined sanction and costs.