Summary
The dispute was concerned with a breach of an agreement about a foreign oil concession, resulting in multi-million damages action.
The claimant was a resident of Jordan.
There were multiple defendants, involving a group of companies and an individual, who was residing in Greece, being the co-founder of the company.
The claimant sought to establish jurisdiction by relying on Article 6(1) of Brussels I. The anchor defendant was the UK subsidiary of the CC Holding.
The High Court held that there was a good arguable case that the English court had jurisdiction under Article 6(1). Mr Justice Creswell held:
“98 […] (1) I consider that the claimant has made out a good arguable case that the court has jurisdiction under Article 6 (1) in relation to Mr Khoury and CCIC. Further (2) as to a cause of action against Mr Khoury and CCIC, to the extent that this is not covered by (1) above, I consider that the claimant has established on the evidence that there is in each case a reasonable prospect of success/a serious question to be tried/a substantial question of fact or law, or both, which the claimant bona fide desires to have tried.” [98]
The decision of High Court as to the issue of jurisdiction under Article 6(1) was affirmed by the English Court of Appeal - Masri v Consolidated Contractors International [2005] EWCA Civ 1436.
The dispute is notorious because there were over 20 connected decisions on the different phases of the same case (including a contempt of court). In this context, Mr Justice Burton made the following observation: “what might be called the Masri Jurisprudence could, by reference to hearings in courts in this jurisdiction alone, almost fill an entire textbook, and indeed has given rise to a number of significant legal decisions of interest to the legal profession. There are, in the papers before me, more than fifty orders or judgments of the courts of England and Wales, ranging from the Queen's Bench Division and Commercial Court through to the Court of Appeal, and on more than one occasion in the House of Lords, all stemming from the steps taken by the Claimant which led to judgment in his favour against the First and Second Defendants (though not against the Third and Seventh), and the steps taken thereafter by the Claimant (for this purpose I leave out of account the numerous proceedings in other jurisdictions than England and Wales) to seek to recover the sums of more than $75m owing and unpaid to the Claimant pursuant to that judgment.” [2011] EWHC 1780 (Comm) [6].
The case even reached the Privy Council raising an issue of whether the English judgment was “obtained by fraud” which led to wrongful acceptance of jurisdiction. The appeal was struck out because it was regarded as being an abuse of process.