Jurisdiction

Choudhary and others v Bhatter and others [2009] EWCA Civ 1176; TLR 20 November

Article 22 of Council Regulation 44/2001/EC provides, inter alia: ‘The following courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction regardless of domicile …’ and then identifies certain further criteria. That direction was not intended to apply to the courts of a member state, for example Denmark, which was not bound by the regulation; and a fortiori, the direction was not intended to apply as between the courts of member states and the courts of non-member states. Accordingly, the opening words of art 22 have no application to a case where the person to be sued is not domiciled in a member state. On the facts of the present case the appropriate venue was India.