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Disarming litigation terrorists

John Fordham explains how devastating freezing injunctions can be

The world of litigation was, for a short period, in grave danger. Its most powerful weapon, the worldwide freezing (Mareva) injunction, had fallen into the wrong hands.

To English litigation lawyers, a worldwide freezing injunction is known as the nuclear weapon in the litigation armoury. Only English and a few like-minded courts have the jurisdiction to grant these very powerful orders. Courts on the continent of Europe do not, neither do courts in the US.

A Denning Creation

The weapon was first fashioned by one of the greatest English judges of the second half of the last century, Lord Denning. One of his relevant decisions concerned a ship called the Mareva which gave its name to Lord Denning's piece of litigation hardware. Commonwealth countries and others followed suit. Subsequently, it was given a statutory basis. Most recently, and regrettably, there has been an attempt to abolish the Mareva name in favour of the allegedly more plain English “freezing injunction”. But, Mareva

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