Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
CASE AND COMMENT RELATED ACTIONS AND THE BRUSSELS CONVENTION
Sarrio v. Kuwait Investment Authority
What is a related action?
Article 22 of the Brussels Convention provides that, where related actions are brought in the courts of different Contracting States, any court other than the court first seised may, while the actions are pending at first instance, stay its proceedings or decline jurisdiction if the two actions can be consolidated in the court first seised. Actions are related for this purpose where “they 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 Article could be seen to serve a number of functions, including:
- (1) Preventing litigation taking place in two Contracting States which will lead to legally irreconcilable judgments, in the sense that the enforcement of both in the same State would be precluded.
- (2) Ensuring that, whenever the court first seised will rule upon matters which are essential to its reasoning process and which will also be critical to the other action, the latter claim will not be advanced in the courts of another Contracting State, at least until the outcome of the first action is resolved.
- (3) Enabling two actions to be heard together in the same court, even though the separate enforcement of two judgments from different Contracting States would not be precluded, whenever there are issues common to both potential sets of proceedings. This will be so even if the resolution of these issues is not strictly necessary for the plaintiff to establish his cause of action.
A unanimous House of Lords in Sarrio SA v. Kuwait Investment Authority
1 effectively accepted proposition (3) to be correct. In so doing, it regarded the Court of Appeal2 as having erroneously adopted proposition (2) and as having given Art. 22 an unduly narrow interpretation. But the House of Lords’ preferred interpretation, while initially attractive, is ultimately unconvincing.
The Kuwait Investment Authority (“KIA”) was domiciled in Kuwait, but was served with a writ within the jurisdiction through its London branch (the KIO). Through the KIO, the KIA controlled a Spanish company, Grupo Torras S.A., and its subsidiaries. Sarrio, a
1. [1997] 3 W.L.R. 1143.
2. [1997] 1 Lloyd’s Rep. 113. Reasoned judgments were delivered by Evans and Brooke, L.JJ., with both of which Peter Gibson, L.J., agreed.
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