The impact of the UK’s Brexit on anti-suit injunctions

Abstract

This chapter examines the relationship of anti-suit injunctions and the Brussels Conventions before considering the rationale for the prohibition of anti-suit injunctions within the EU judicial areas. It assesses the prohibition of anti-suit injunctions in the Turner and West Tankers cases. The chapter explores the Brexit effect on anti-suit injunctions. Anti-suit injunctions, in Anglo-Saxon law, rather than continental law, are orders directing a party not to initiate or pursue legal action in a different jurisdiction, or if they had already initiated it, that they withdraw it. The English Court has replied by concluding that there is nothing to prevent it from granting an injunction to restrain proceedings which are in breach of an arbitration clause. Critics argued that the decisions gave parties free rein to ignore arbitration agreements and commence proceedings in their preferred court concerning the existence and validity of an arbitration in order to delay or frustrate an arbitration: so-called torpedo actions.