In a case decided today, Hardy Exploration & Production (India) Inc v Government of India [2018] EWHC 1916 (Comm), IISTL member Peter Macdonald-Eggers QC in his judicial capacity faced a nice problem concerning the situs of a debt (vital for issues of third party debt orders, and also issues such as confiscation). We were always told that this was where the debtor was resident, that is, where the debt was recoverable (most recently in Taurus Petroleum Ltd v State Oil Marketing Co [2017] UKSC 64, noted here in this blog). But this can be ambiguous: what if the debtor resides in Ruritania and yet the debt, for example because of an exclusive jurisdiction clause, is recoverable only in Utopia? In this case the answer now seems to be Utopia.
In the Hardy case a claimant had the benefit of an arbitration award for $70 million or so against the Indian government. The government was for its part owed a tidy sum by an indirectly state-owned corporation incorporated in London and doing business there: but the contract creating the debt had what was effectively an Indian exclusive jurisdiction clause. Could a third party debt order be made against the corporation on the basis that the debt was situated in England? No: the debt fell to be regarded as situated in India and beyond the English court’s reach.
On the basis that this blog is for busy practitioners, we will leave it at that. For those interested, there is a great deal more in the judgment: a lot of scholarship, and also more about the third party debt order jurisdiction generally. Happy reading.
