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NLJ this week: Tests for freezing orders, the courts’ preference and a lack of clarity

08 March 2024
Issue: 8062 / Categories: Legal News , Freezing orders , Fraud , Commercial
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Freezing orders in fraud cases, The Niedersachsen threshold and the jurisdiction test come under scrutiny in this week’s NLJ

Alan Sheeley, partner, and Sara Esfandyari, associate, Pinsent Masons, explain how more clarity in this area of the law could help practitioners and fraud victims.

A fraud victim seeking a freezing order in order to reclaim their losses must first satisfy a court that they have a ‘good arguable case’. There are two tests for this— The Niedersachsen threshold and the jurisdiction test—but which do the courts prefer? Unfortunately, the law is not clear.

The authors cite two recent cases suggesting ‘that the English courts favour a pro-applicant approach, with the less demanding “good arguable case” test in The Niedersachsen seemingly the Commercial Court’s preferred approach in freezing order applications’. Sheeley and Esfandyari caution, however, that ‘the story doesn’t end here’ and that, until the Court of Appeal clarifies the position, practitioners should pay heed to both tests.

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NEWS
Artificial intelligence may be revolutionising the law, but its misuse could wreck cases and careers, warns Clare Arthurs of Penningtons Manches Cooper in this week's NLJ
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
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