A brief mention must mark the judicial eradication of the atrocity that had been the 1975 decision of the Court of Appeal in Henry v Geoprosco International Ltd.1 It had been disposed of in England by the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Act 1982, s.33 but had retained a zombie-like existence in certain jurisdictions of the common law. One such jurisdiction was the Cayman Islands, for the benefit of which it was decisively killed off by the Privy Council in IGCF SPV 21 Ltd v Al Jomaih Power Ltd and Another.2 There will not have been a wet eye in the house.

It is to be recalled that the Court of Appeal had held, in effect, that when a defendant applied to a foreign court for an order that it not exercise its jurisdiction, say on the basis of there having been an arbitration agreement or a discretion in the court of the forum non conveniens kind, the very making of that application was to be seen as a submission to the foreign court sufficient to render any subsequent judgment on the merits of the case entitled to recognition in England as res judicata.3 The reasoning appeared to be that, in asking a court to exercise a judicial power (to dismiss or to stay), one is accepting that the court has a right to say no and to draw the consequences (to adjudicate) liable to follow from that. But Denning LJ had famously said4 that:

The Court of Appeal in Geoprosco had been perfectly content to say that Denning LJ had been quite wrong: indeed, there was something rather distasteful in the way in which it did it. But the Privy Council, speaking through Lord Hamblen, has now