Court of Appeal: English law governs tort claims for mistreatment at CIA “black sites”

In Zubaydah v Foreign And Commonwealth Office & Ors [2022] EWCA Civ 334, the Court of Appeal considered which law should apply to tort claims against the State based on the Claimant’s extreme mistreatment and torture at “black sites” at the hands of the CIA between 2002 and 2006. Lane J had held that the…

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Forum conveniens

We previously wrote about how, following the Supreme Court’s approach in Brownlie II, the likelihood is that “proper forum” disputes will form a major battleground in future international injury litigation. It seems that the first wave of such cases is already arriving, as illustrated by the recent failure of a forum challenge in Klifa v…

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Cross-border clinical negligence claims

There are few cases dealing with breach of duty in cross-border clinical negligence litigation. However, the rising number of claims arising out of botched cosmetic surgery carried out abroad means that this is an issue of increasing significance. Clarke v Kalecinski & Ors [2022] EWHC 488 (QB) is an interesting and timely decision. Foster J…

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Tour operator delay in providing refunds breached Package Travel Regulations

This week, defunct tour operators Teletext Holidays and Alpharooms.com were declared to have breached the Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018 for their delay in providing refunds for holidays cancelled by COVID-19. The judgment, in a claim brought by the Competition and Markets Authority against two tour operators, will also be of collateral interest to travel practitioners. Unusually,…

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Case management of foreign law disputes after Brownlie

The Commercial Court has just released its 2022 Guide (found here). The new focus on the post-Brownlie approach to foreign law disputes is immediately mentioned in the Introduction: There are two other areas to which the judges of the Court would particularly draw attention. The first is the consideration which is given to the options…

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The Montreal Convention and the “fifth jurisdiction”

In Akulinina and Kondrashova -v- Ifly S.A. the High Court considered, for the first time, the jurisdiction provisions in Article 33(2) of the Montreal Convention. These provisions are often referred to as providing the Convention’s “fifth jurisdiction” (being an additional basis of jurisdiction beyond the four identified in Article 33(1)). Spencer Turner considers the important…

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Appeals against findings of foreign law

The appeal courts have repeatedly emphasised that a dissatisfied party seeking to overturn a finding of fact will face an uphill battle. Central to this analysis is the trial judge’s role as the master of fact-finding. The trial judge carries out this role in an atmosphere and setting which simply cannot be recreated on an…

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