England and Wales High Court (Commercial Court) Decisions

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
COMMERCIAL COURT

		Rolls Building Royal Courts of Justice
		17th November 2017

HHJ WAKSMAN QC:

1. I have first  to consider n principle whether to continue the existing relief, subject to the various further applications that will follow, in circumstances where none of the Cause of Action Defendants ("CADs") have engaged with this claim at all, and where they have provided none of the asset disclosure which they were required to do. All of them have been served, in the manner permitted by the court, with the original proceedings, the original injunctions, the further injunctions, and notification of today's applications.

2. I have previously granted the original and subsequent without notice injunctions, for the reasons advanced to me at the time. Those reasons all still pertain with the additional feature that no one has sought to gainsay any of them. For that reason I will in principle continue these injunctions. I am not however persuaded to make them continue "until after enforcement"; instead they will last "until trial or further order" ie the usual form of order. I follow that if the non-engagement by the defendants continues, it is likely that any trial will be attended only by the claimant, but if so, then it is after judgment on that trial (on the assumption that the court is going to find in favour of the claimant), that the court maybe asked to consider extending. It does not need to do that now. Further, if the defendants do start to engage with this process then it will be rather more complicated than appears at the moment. , than the claimants may think at the moment.

3. So far as material disclosure is concerned, I can take as read the evidence as to material disclosure which was put before the court at previous hearings before me and the evidence that is recited at paragraph 121. Of course, there were then some disclosure matters which were for the attention of Mr Justice Teare who made an order a week ago. So far as the position since then, Mr Lowenstein's skeleton argument has helpfully reproduced the relevant evidence from Mr Young's fourth affidavit which runs from paragraph 177 to 190, which I have read. In addition steps have been taken to draw to my attention matters which have arisen since the evidence was filed in a very helpful and detailed note which will go into evidence hereafter, in the usual way. Having read that, there is nothing which gives me any concern so far as granting this final part of the order or, indeed, any of the orders which provisionally I had said should be made today.