LINUZS AND OTHERS V LATMAR HOLDINGS CORPORATION

[2013] EWCA Civ 4, Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Pill, Lord Justice Toulson and Lord Justice Munby, 17 January 2013

Conflict of laws - Jurisdiction - Joinder - European Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001, article 6.1

The claimant commenced proceedings against a number of defendants, ex-employees and officials, alleging deceit, fraud and conspiracy. These arose out of two agreements, the Media Focus Agreement and the Arindal Agreement, which the defendants had allegedly caused the claimant to enter into and which were allegedly devices to siphon funds from the claimant. Default judgments were obtained against the defendants, but a number of them applied to have the judgments set aside. It was common ground that the claimant had a good arguable case that there had been fraud, although the defendants asserted that there was no good arguable case that Media Focus was party to any conspiracy. The question was whether, in respect of the claim involving the alleged Media Focus conspiracy, the court had jurisdiction over the defendants under article 6.1 of the Brussels Regulation, which provides that jurisdiction exists against a defendant "where he is one of a number of defendants, in the courts for the place where any one of them is domiciled, provided the claims are so closely connected that it is expedient to hear and determine them together to avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgments resulting from separate proceedings".

The Court of Appeal held as follows.

(1) The relevant date for determining jurisdiction under article 6.1 was the date on which jurisdiction was invoked, the date of the issue of the claim form. It was thus immaterial that a default judgment had been obtained against Media Focus.

(2) There was a good arguable case that Media Focus was party to a fraudulent conspiracy along with Arindal and there were not two distinct conspiracies.

(3) If there were two separate conspiracies, there were strong connections between them which gave rise to a risk of irreconcilable judgments within article 6.