Every day, there are court cases. Every day judges make decisions, whether that be based on fact, based on prior rulings, or something else that leans a judge a certain way. Sometimes instances happen where there is an issue or an incident between two different jurisdictions. For instance, and as was used as an example in this paper, look at the West Tankers case. This is a case that involves England and Italy. West Tankers, owned by an English company, collided with a jetty, owned by an Italian company named Erg Petroli SpA. Erg put a claim in for compensation, which was granted, and the company received money from insurance, Allianz SpA, for the damages. However, they began an arbitration case in London against West Tankers looking for a sum of money. Later down the road, Allianz SpA, Erg’s insurer, filed a case against West Tankers in an Italian court looking to get back the insurance money that they had paid to Erg in response to the initial jetty collision. Naturally, West Tankers opposed this and looked to the English courts to file an injunction that restrained Allianz SpA from going through with this Italian case. This case eventually found its way all the way up the ladder and in front of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). In this case, the court held that, in simple terms, a member state cannot give an order to stop or restrain an individual from filing proceedings in another member state. These injunctions are called “anti-suit injunctions.” This is the first case that featured one of these “anti-suit injunctions” and it is a bit of a coincidence that it involved the United Kingdom, which has voted to exit the European Union. Now that the UK has exited the EU, a potential issue arises. The UK is no longer a member state, therefore anti-suit injunctions can be filed against them. If the West Tankers case happened today, there would be a massive headache and it is hard to tell how long the case would take to be resolved. Anti-suit injunctions could save money for countries or businesses, but they bring about large issues for the states involved. Also, as is stated in this chapter, “there is a risk that where an anti- suit injunction is granted to stop proceedings in another Member State’s court, those courts might later refuse to recognize and enforce the arbitral award owing to it being contrary to the country’s public policy be virtue of Article V2(b) of the New York Convention.” These anti-suit injunctions have become a very important piece of EU legislation and court proceedings. It will be very interesting to see what exactly happens in wake of BREXIT.
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