Last year we dealt here with Teare J’s meticulous decision in Aspen Underwriting Ltd & Ors v Kairos Shipping Ltd [2017] EWHC 1904 (Comm), in which following the Atlantik Confidence debacle, hull underwriters, having previously paid out on the orders of her owners’ (Dutch) bank under an insurance assignment provision, now sued the bank to recover their money on the basis that the ship had been deliberately scuttled. The issue was whether the bank could insist on being sued in the Netherlands on the basis of Art.4 of Brussels I Recast. The decision was that most claims, including those based on unjust enrichment, had to be brought in the Netherlands. Howver, claims based on tortious misrepresentation and under the Misrepresentation Act 1967 could be brought here. The fact that such claims related to insurance under Art.14 was no bar, since there was no question of a large Dutch bank being a weaker party who, according to Recital 18 to the Regulation, needed to be protected from the machinations of big bad insurers.
The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal (seeAspen Underwriting Ltd & Ors v Credit Europe Bank NV [2018] EWCA Civ 2590). On most points it simply said that the Judge had got it absolutely right. The only exception was that it was not open to a judge, consitently with Euro-law, to take the sensible view and decline to apply Art.14 to anyone he thouht was not in fact a weaker party. But this did not matter, since in Kabeg v Mutuelles Du Mans Assurances (Case C-340/16) [2017] I.L. Pr. 31 the ECJ Advocate-General had since Teare J’s judgment accepted that Art.14 could be disapplied to a subrogee “regularly involved in the commercial or otherwise professional settlement of insurance-related claims who voluntarily assumed the realisation of the claim as party of its commercial or otherwise professional activity”. This was near enough to the position of the bank here to justify ignoring Art.14.
Some good news, in other words, for marine underwriters trying to get their money back from those acting for crooks. On the other had, the moral we advanced in our previous article still stands: all policies in future ought to contain a term, rigorously enforced, stating that no monies will be paid out save against a signed receipt specifically submitting to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts in respect of any subsequent dispute respecting the payment or the policy generally.
