AMT FUTURES LTD V MARZILLIER, DR MEIER & DR GUNTNER RECHTSANWALTSGESELLSCHAFT MBH

[2014] EWHC 1085 (Comm), Queen's Bench Division, Commercial Court, Mr Justice Popplewell, 11 April 2014

Conflict of laws - Jurisdiction - Place where the harm occurred - Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters, article 5(3)

This was the defendant's application for a declaration that the court did not have jurisdiction and for setting aside of the claim form. The claimant (AMT) was a regulated financial services provider in the UK which had acted as an execution-only broker in buying and selling derivatives. The defendant (MMGR) was a law firm in Munich representing a number of the claimant's former clients in a suit against AMT before German courts, where the liability claimed was framed in German tort law - essentially accessory liability ancillary to that of the introducing brokers (who were mostly not made defendants). AMT had sued MMGR before the English court arguing that MMGR had induced their former clients to breach the English law and jurisdiction clause in the client agreements. It was common ground that AMT had a good arguable case that the suits had been commenced in breach of the exclusive English jurisdiction clause. The sums claimed were essentially settlement sums paid to former clients, legal and investigatory costs and unspecified amounts of lost profits from the German market and time spent by management defending the claims.