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England and Wales High Court (Commercial Court) Decisions |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Commercial Court) Decisions >> Latin American Investments Ltd v Maroil Trading Inc & Anor [2017] EWHC 1254 (Comm) (26 May 2017) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Comm/2017/1254.html Cite as: [2017] 2 CLC 45, [2017] EWHC 1254 (Comm) |
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QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
COMMERCIAL COURT
Rolls Building, 7 Rolls Buildings Fetter Lane, London EC4A 1NL |
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B e f o r e :
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LATIN AMERICAN INVESTMENTS LIMITED -and- (1) MAROIL TRADING INC (a company incorporated in Panama) (2) SEA POWER SHIPPING CORPORATION (a company incorporated in Panama) AND BETWEEN OCEANIC TRANS SHIPPING EST (a company incorporated in Saudi Arabia) |
Claimant Defendants/ Respondents Part 20 Claimant/ Additional Party |
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- and - |
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(1) MAROIL TRADING INC (a company incorporated in Panama) (2) SEA PIONEER SHIPPING CORPORATION (a company incorporated in Panama) |
Part 20 Defendants |
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David Foxton QC, Louise Hutton and Stephen Donnelly (instructed by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP) for the Defendants
Hearing date: 19 May 2017
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Crown Copyright ©
Mr. Justice Teare :
The background
"To justify obtaining a freezing injunction, a claimant has to show a good arguable case on the merits. In Ninemia Maritime Corp. v Trave Schiffahrtsgesellschaft mbH & Co KG, The Niedersachsen [1984] 1 AER 398 at 404 Mustill J (as he then was) described a good arguable case for these purposes as one "which is more than barely capable of serious argument, and yet not necessarily one which the judge believes to have a better than 50% chance of success". It can immediately be seen that this either is the same test as "serious issue to be tried" for the purposes of resisting a strike out application or, if there is any difference between the two tests, it is an imperceptible one."
Two preliminary matters
"42.4 An order that the Defendants do pay or procure payment of the Commission payment, its traceable proceeds and any profits made from the use of the same, together with interest thereon, to the Joint Ventures.
42.5 Further or in the alternative, an order that the Defendants do pay a sum equivalent in amount to the Commission Payment and any profits made from the use of the same and/or equitable compensation and/or damages, together with interest thereon, to the Joint Ventures Agreement."
The "reflective loss" principle
"These authorities support the following propositions:
1) Where a company suffers loss caused by a breach of duty owed to it, only the company may sue in respect of that loss. No action lies at the suit of a shareholder suing in that capacity and no other to make good a diminution in the value of the shareholder's shareholding where that merely reflects the loss suffered by the company. A claim will not lie by a shareholder to make good a loss which would be made good if the company's assets were replenished through action against the party responsible for the loss, even if the company, acting through its constitutional organs, has declined or failed to make good that loss. So much is clear from Prudential, particularly at pages 222-3, Heron International , particularly at pages 261-2, George Fischer, particularly at pages 266 and 270-271, Gerber and Stein v. Blake, particularly at pages 726-729.
2) Where a company suffers loss but has no cause of action to sue to recover that loss, the shareholder in the company may sue in respect of it (if the shareholder has a cause of action to do so), even though the loss is a diminution in the value of the shareholding. This is supported by Lee v. Sheard , at pages 195-6, George Fischer and Gerber.
3) Where a company suffers loss caused by a breach of duty to it, and a shareholder suffers a loss separate and distinct from that suffered by the company caused by breach of a duty independently owed to the shareholder, each may sue to recover the loss caused to it by breach of the duty owed to it but neither may recover loss caused to the other by breach of the duty owed to that other. I take this to be the effect of Lee v. Sheard , at pages 195-6, Heron International , particularly at page 262, R. P. Howard , particularly at page 123, Gerber and Stein v. Blake , particularly at page 726. I do not think the observations of Leggatt L.J. in Barings at p. 435B and of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand in Christensen v. Scott at page 280, lines 25-35, can be reconciled with this statement of principle.
These principles do not resolve the crucial decision which a court must make on a strike-out application, whether on the facts pleaded a shareholder's claim is sustainable in principle, nor the decision which the trial court must make, whether on the facts proved the shareholder's claim should be upheld. On the one hand the court must respect the principle of company autonomy, ensure that the company's creditors are not prejudiced by the action of individual shareholders and ensure that a party does not recover compensation for a loss which another party has suffered. On the other, the court must be astute to ensure that the party who has in fact suffered loss is not arbitrarily denied fair compensation. The problem can be resolved only by close scrutiny of the pleadings at the strike-out stage and all the proven facts at the trial stage: the object is to ascertain whether the loss claimed appears to be or is one which would be made good if the company had enforced its full rights against the party responsible, and whether (to use the language of Prudential at page 223) the loss claimed is "merely a reflection of the loss suffered by the company." In some cases the answer will be clear, as where the shareholder claims the loss of dividend or a diminution in the value of a shareholding attributable solely to depletion of the company's assets, or a loss unrelated to the business of the company. In other cases, inevitably, a finer judgment will be called for. At the strike-out stage any reasonable doubt must be resolved in favour of the claimant."
"It is of course correct that the diminution in the value of the plaintiffs' shares was by definition a personal loss and not the company's loss, but that is not the point. The point is that it merely reflected the diminution of the company's assets. The test is not whether the company could have made a claim in respect of the loss in question; the question is whether, treating the company and the shareholder as one for this purpose, the shareholders' loss is franked by that of the company. If so, such reflected loss is recoverable by the company and not by the shareholders. "
"………..the key problem with reflective loss is double recovery. It makes sense to me that if a company's shareholder takes the damages, there is the possibility of defrauding the company's creditors and, for that matter, its other shareholders. Maybe defrauding is the wrong word to use and it might be better to speak in terms of the potential for the shareholder to act in a way which damages company's creditors and the other shareholders, but in any case the problem does not arise with an injunction to restore property to the company."
" ……….it seems to me that a claim for an injunction raised different considerations to a claim for damages. If the defendant owes a duty to [the] claimant and has breached that duty, and it is otherwise appropriate, I cannot see why an injunction is not capable of being an appropriate remedy. There is no problem with double recovery and so no problem of the kind considered in Johnson v Gore Wood about creditors. I will accordingly refuse to strike out the injunction claim."
Is a Freezing Order available in support of the Claimant's claim ?
"Whenever an interlocutory injunction is applied for, the judge, if otherwise minded to make the order should, as a matter of good practice, pay careful attention to the substantive relief that is, or will be, sought. The interlocutory injunction in aid of the substantive relief should not place a greater burden on the respondent than is necessary. ……..This is particularly so in the case of freezing orders applied for without notice. Assets of the defendant to which the claimant has no proprietary claim whatever are to frozen so as to constitute a source from which the claimant can hope to satisfy the money judgment that, in the substantive proceedings, he hopes to claim. "
"There are no constraints ………….on the types of monetary relief which [the claimant] may seek: his claim may be for payment of a debt, or damages, or an account, or for statutory compensation."
The $89m. argument
Risk of dissipation
Conclusion as to the continuation of the Freezing Order
Security for costs