No deal and jurisdiction

 

A few interesting developments on jurisdiction in the event of a no-deal Brexit on 29 March.

  1. On 1st April 2019, the UK would become a contracting party to the Hague Convention on Choice of Courts Agreement 2005 in its own right (it currently participates through the EU’s ratification). The UK government deposited its instrument of ratification on 28 December 2018 – while still a member of the EU, which has exclusive competence over jurisdiction.
  2. The European Commission set out its position in a notice on 18 January. EU rules on enforcement of UK judgments in the EU under the Brussels Regime will no longer apply even where the judgment was handed down before the withdrawal date, or the enforcement proceedings were commenced before the withdrawal date. Enforcement of such a judgment in a Member States will be subject to its national law. However, where the instrument concerned requires exequatur, a UK court’s judgment which has been exequatured but not yet enforced in a Member State before the exit date, will still be enforced under the Brussels Regime.
  3. The draft Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 would see the end of the Brussels Regime and the Lugano Conventions. These regimes and the domestic legislation that implements them will, for transitional purposes, continue to apply in England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland to determine jurisdiction for proceedings commenced in the UK before exit day. Judgments obtained in EU and EEA States will continue to be enforced under these regimes where proceedings were initiated before the withdrawal date.

 

The Sun newspaper reported today that Ladbrokes has put the odds at 3/1 that the UK will leave the EU without a deal before April 1, 2019, although it is not clear whether or not this was before the passage in the House of Commons tonight of two resolutions, Sir Graham Brady’s and Dame Caroline Spelman’s.

 

Published by

Professor Simon Baughen

Professor Simon Baughen was appointed as Professor of Shipping Law in September 2013 (previously Reader at the University of Bristol Law School). Simon Baughen studied law at Oxford and practised in maritime law for several years before joining academia. His research interests lie mainly in the field of shipping law, but also include the law of trusts and the environmental law implications of the activities of multinational corporations in the developing world. Simon's book on Shipping Law, has run to seven editions (soon to be eight) and is already well-known to academics and students alike as by far the most learned and approachable work on the subject. Furthermore, he is now the author of the very well-established practitioner's work Summerskill on Laytime. He has an extensive list of publications to his name, including International Trade and the Protection of the Environment, and Human Rights and Corporate Wrongs - Closing the Governance Gap. He has also written and taught extensively on commercial law, trusts and environmental law. Simon is a member of the Institute of International Shipping and Trade Law, a University Research Centre within the School of Law, and he currently teaches at Swansea on the LLM in:Carriage of Goods by Sea, Land and Air; Charterparties Law and Practice; International Corporate Governance.

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