Is there life after Cherney v Deripaska? asks Ivan Gordienko
Nearly every commercial transaction with a foreign element has the potential to become subject to a disagreement regarding the jurisdiction of any claims. Commerce is a global market place and the manner in which deals are done varies greatly.
Sophisticated businessmen might do business on a handshake, in other cases they commit their arrangements to ever more complex and confusing (and unintentionally contradictory) written agreements.
Recent case law tells us that neither arrangement is guaranteed to avoid a substantial argument relating to a jurisdiction and that the absence of both parties from England will not prevent the English courts seizing jurisdiction where it is right to do so.
This article will examine decisions of the English courts on these two, quite different, commercial arrangements and question whether the decision in Cherney v Deripaska [2009] 1 All ER (Comm) 333 (Deripaska) has made a lasting difference to the jurisdiction question, looking at a leading case pre-dating the decision and one that immediately followed it.
