Busy Term for Top London Judges

The judges of the UK Supreme Court and the Privy Council were quite busy last term with private international law matters.

The UK Supreme Court issued one judgment of relevance, whereas the Privy Council issued no fewer than three.

This post briefly outlines the issues and decisions in these four cases.

P&ID v Nigeria: Currency for Costs Order

The Supreme Court gave a ruling in Process & Industrial Developments Ltd v Nigeria [2025] UKSC 36 on 22 October 2025.

The Court of Appeal judgment in Nigeria v Process & Industrial Developments Ltd [2023] EWHC 2638 (Comm) has already been reported on the EAPIL blog.

In brief, P&ID obtained arbitral awards of US$6.6 billion plus interest at 7% in 2015 and 2017. Nigeria’s total liability at the date of trial exceeded $11 billion. Knowles J set aside those awards under section 68 of the Arbitration Act 1996 on the ground they were obtained by fraud and that the awards and the way in which they were procured were contrary to public policy (section 68(2)(g)). In the course of successfully challenging the awards, Nigeria incurred total unassessed costs (excluding interest) of £44.217 million. The costs were billed by Nigeria’s solicitors in sterling and Nigeria paid in sterling between November 2019 and November 2024. To make those payments, Nigeria presumedly had to convert naira, its national currency, into sterling.

The question was whether Knowles J had erred in awarding Nigeria’s costs in sterling rather than in naira. P&ID argued that the costs should have been denominated in naira because, for several years, and particularly since Nigeria ceased to peg its currency to the US dollar in 2023, the naira had fallen markedly against other currencies, including sterling. P&ID submitted that if Nigeria were awarded the costs in sterling, it would receive a substantial windfall at P&ID’s expense, since the sterling sums Nigeria had paid its solicitors had been equivalent to approximately 25 billion naira at the time of payment, whereas they were equivalent to 95 billion naira at the time of trial.

Quite sensibly, the Supreme Court held that:

It is consistent with the nature of the court’s costs jurisdiction and with legal certainty that there be a general rule that an order for costs should be made in sterling or in the currency in which the solicitor has billed the client and in which the client has paid or there is a liability to pay. That reflects the liability which the party has incurred by litigating in the English courts. There may, nonetheless, be circumstances in which the court chooses not to award costs in the currency in which the receiving party has paid its lawyers. If the court considers that the parties’ choice of the currency of payment is abusive or otherwise inappropriate, the court could properly make the costs order in sterling notwithstanding the party’s use of that other currency. Such a circumstance might arise, for example, if a party were to use a currency with which neither it nor its lawyers had a real connection, to speculate on making a profit by its appreciation in value. [25]

Krys v Farnum Place: Relevance of Success in Foreign Appeal for Decision Refusing Liquidator’s Application to Sanction the Appeal

The facts of Krys (as Liquidator of Fairfield Sentry Ltd (In Liquidation)) v Farnum Place LLC [2025] UKPC 43 (from the Court of Appeal of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (Virgin Islands) were rather unusual.

At first instance, Bannister J refused an application by the Liquidator to sanction an appeal by the Liquidator in proceedings in the United States.

By interim orders pending the hearing of the appeal against Bannister J’s order, the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal (“Court of Appeal”) authorised the Liquidator to pursue the US Appeal. The Liquidator succeeded in the US Appeal on 26 September 2014.

The Court of Appeal had heard the appeal against Bannister J’s order on 17 July 2014 and reserved judgment. On 26 September 2014, the Liquidator’s lawyers sent a copy of the US Appeal judgment to the Court of Appeal. Over seven years later, on 10 March 2022, the Court of Appeal handed down judgment on the Liquidator’s appeal against Bannister J’s refusal to sanction the US Appeal. It dismissed the Liquidator’s appeal on the grounds that Bannister J’s decision was a proper exercise of his discretion. The Court of Appeal made no reference in its judgment to the Liquidator’s success in the US Appeal, seemingly due to oversight.

The issue was whether the Liquidator’s success in the US Appeal was clearly a material change in circumstances from those existing at the time of Bannister J’s order, which the Court of Appeal ought to have taken into account and which should have led it to allow the appeal.

The Privy Council thought that it was:

The Board is in no doubt that the SCCA decision was a material change in circumstances which the Court of Appeal should have taken into account. The decision was the outcome of the very appeal for which sanction was sought. The Board finds it impossible to see how it was not at least a material factor to take into account. [38]

Consequently, the Privy Council set aside the order of the Court of Appeal affirming Bannister J’s decision. Furthermore, the Privy Council allowed the appeal and ordered that sanction is granted for the Liquidator’s actions in bringing the US Appeal.

Credit Suisse v Ivanishvili: Double Actionability and Renvoi

In Credit Suisse Life (Bermuda) Ltd v Ivanishvili [2025] UKPC 53 (from the Court of Appeal for Bermuda), the Privy Council applied the double actionability rule and held that there was no room for renvoi in the Bermudian private international law of torts and obligations more widely. Interestingly, the Privy Council noted that it would have been open to either party to invite it not to follow the double actionability rule and instead to apply only the law of the place where the tort was committed [123]. As Dr Franziska Arnold-Dwyer argues in her post on this case, the Privy Council might have been receptive to such an argument had it been made.

Al Jomiah Power: Abolition of Rule in Geoprosco

In IGCF SPV 21 Ltd v Al Jomaih Power Ltd [2025] UKPC 54 (from the Court of Appeal of the Cayman Islands), the Privy Council had to decide whether the rule in Henry v Geoprosco International Ltd [1976] QB 726 represented the law of the Cayman Islands. The “rule”, abolished in the UK by section 33 of the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Act 1982 and in other common law jurisdictions, provides that where a defendant voluntarily appears before a foreign court to invite the court not to exercise its jurisdiction (under its own local laws) it will have submitted to the jurisdiction. This includes applying for relief (interim or otherwise) in the foreign proceedings, or applying for a stay in those proceedings in favour of another jurisdiction.

The Privy Council held that

Geoprosco has rightly been reversed in England and Wales and, by statute or case law, it has been reversed or not followed in other common law jurisdictions. It should form no part of Cayman law. [52]

Furthermore, the Privy Council held that the law of Cayman is as stated in Rubin v Eurofinance SA [2012] UKSC 46. In other words, “A step that is not consistent with or relevant to the challenge to the jurisdiction or obtaining a stay will usually be a submission to that jurisdiction.” ([56], quoting p 97 of Akai Pty Ltd v People’s Insurance Co Ltd [1998] 1 Lloyd’s Rep 90.