Rllifung Co. Ltd. v. Bank of China and Another

HCCL000057/1995

1995 No. CL57

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF HONG KONG

HIGH COURT

COMMERCIAL LIST

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Coram: The Hon. Mr. Justice Keith in Chambers

Dates of hearing: 8 and 9 June 1995

Date of delivery of judgment: 9 June 1995

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J U D G M E N T

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1. This is another case in which the parties before the court are two innocent victims of a fraud. At least, that is what one of the parties to these proceedings says. To understand why, it is necessary for me to set out the facts in some detail. If I had not given judgment today, the parties would have had to wait for at least another two weeks before knowing the outcome of this application, and I therefore trust that I shall be forgiven for giving judgment this afternoon on the interesting arguments which have been advanced to me without going into them, exceptionally well-argued though they have been, with the analysis which they would otherwise have deserved.

THE LETTER OF CREDIT

2. On 28th December 1994, the Plaintiff, Rillfung Company Ltd. ("Rillfung"), opened a letter of credit with the First Defendant, the Bank of China ("the Bank"), in favour of Kleen Green Technologies Ltd. ("Kleen Green"). The sum payable under the letter of credit was US$3,798,000.00. The payment related to the supply by Kleen Green of 120,000 litres of a veterinary product known as Remedial Livestock Prophylactic ("RLP") at a price of US$31.65 per litre. The goods were to be shipped to Hong Kong from New Zealand where Kleen Green was based. The letter of credit required various documents to be provided to the Bank before payments could be made under it. They included the following two documents :

(i) a certificate from Kleen Green to the effect that copies of one full set of non-negotiable documents had been sent by courier to Rillfung within 7 days of the shipment of the goods;

(ii) an inspection certificate issued by Rillfung to the effect that the goods had been inspected and had been found to be in good order and condition.

Rillfung was an existing customer of the Bank, and the inspection certificate was required to be signed on behalf of Rillfung by persons whose signatures conformed with signatures held on the Bank's file.

THE TRADE FINANCE AGREEMENT

3. Although the letter of credit was opened on Rillfung's application, Rillfung had never intended to buy the goods itself. A couple of months previously, it had agreed in writing to provide finance to MTO Merchandise Company Ltd. ("MTO"). That agreement was dated 20th October 1994. It provided that Rillfung would open a letter of credit up to US$5,000,000.00, and the beneficiary could only draw on that letter of credit once MTO had paid the amount of the proposed drawdown to Rillfung. Rillfung's reward for providing this facility was to be the additional payment by MTO to Rillfung of 1% of the amount of the proposed drawdown. It was pursuant to that agreement that Rillfung opened the letter of credit in favour of Kleen Green. There was no underlying contract between Rillfung and Kleen Green at all.

MTO'S FINANCE BROKERAGE BUSINESS

4. The reason why MTO had wanted Rillfung to provide finance (even though MTO was going to pay for the provision of that finance, plus 1%, before the finance was even provided) has been explained in an affirmation made by one of its directors, Mok Pak Kui. MTO has contacts in China. It acts as finance brokers for a number of them. That is because it is difficult for them to obtain letters of credit in China. MTO therefore causes letters of credit to be opened by nominees on their behalf in Hong Kong. MTO insists on payment in full by its contacts of the amount to be drawn down before any payments are made under the letter of credit. It makes its profit by charging its contacts a fee for its services.

THE BUYER OF THE RLP

5. So who was the true buyer of the 120,000 litres of RLP? Rillfung claims that it believed that MTO was the buyer because that is what Rillfung claims it was told by Rillfung's agent. However, MTO asserts that the true buyer was a Mr. Chow, who, it says, asked Mr. Mok in December 1994 to cause a letter of credit to be opened for the purchase of the RLP. The letter of credit which Rillfung opened was that letter of credit. However, as we shall see, Kleen Green claims that the buyer was another company altogether which was based in Shenzhen, Po Wei Company ("Po Wei").

THE FIRST CONSIGNMENT

6. 2,000 litres of RLP were air-freighted from New Zealand to Hong Kong in February 1995. No problems arose in connection with that consignment. The price was US$63,300.00. Mr. Mok claims that associates of Mr. Chow paid him the sum of HK$500,000.00 in cash, and he claims that he used that money to pay Rillfung. For its part, Rillfung admits being paid by MTO the sum of HK$488,250.00, which I assume to be the Hong Kong equivalent of US$63,300.00. Rillfung therefore issued an inspection certificate for the goods, and in due course the Bank paid the sum of US$63,300.00 to Kleen Green.

THE SECOND CONSIGNMENT

7. It is the second consignment of RLP which has given rise to the dispute to which this action relates. Rillfung claims that on 20th March, it was informed by the Bank that the Bank had been presented with a set of documents under the letter of credit relating to a second consignment of RLP. This consignment was for the balance of 118,000 litres. The price was US$3,734,700.00. The Bank was putting Rillfung on notice that once the Bank had checked the documents presented to it, the Bank would require Rillfung to put it in funds to cover the payment to be made under the letter of credit.

8. Rillfung claims that all of this came as a complete surprise to it. It knew nothing of a second consignment of RLP, and it had not been paid the amount of the proposed drawdown for a second consignment by MTO. However, Rillfung was not at the time unduly concerned, because it knew that the Bank would not make any payment under the letter of credit until the Bank had been presented with an inspection certificate issued by Rillfung for the goods to which the second consignment related. It is here that Rillfung claims that it had a second surprise. The Bank informed Rillfung that among the documents presented to it was an inspection certificate for the second consignment which purported to have been issued by Rillfung and signed by its authorised signatories.

THE PROCEEDINGS

9. Understandably, Rillfung became very concerned that the Bank would pay Kleen Green the sum of US$3,734,700.00 under the letter of credit. The course of action which it decided to take was to issue proceedings against the Bank, and to apply ex parte for an injunction restraining the Bank from making any further payments under the letter of credit. Bewley J. granted Rillfung such an injunction on 3rd April. That order was continued by Deputy Judge Wesley Wong on 10th April until such time as Rillfung's summons for the injunction to continue until trial or further order could be heard. That is the first of the two summonses before me today, though on 10th April Deputy Judge Wong ordered (presumably pursuant to Ord. 15 r. 6 of the Rules of the Supreme Court) that Kleen Green be joined as a party to these proceedings. Kleen Green has been described in all subsequent documents as "the Intervener", though it would have been more accurate to have described Kleen Green as the 2nd Defendant, and I direct that it be described as the 2nd Defendant from now on.

RILLFUNG'S CASE

10. Rillfung's claim that the Bank is not entitled to make any payments to Kleen Green under the letter of credit is based on three factual assertions :

(i) Rillfung claims that it has never presented the Bank with an inspection certificate relating to the second consignment. The inspection certificate presented to the Bank is alleged by Rillfung to be a forgery. The Bank was informed of that on 28th March. Mr. Mok agrees that MTO did not ask Rillfung to provide it, and that he did not intend to ask Rillfung to do so until (a) he knew that the second consignment was ready for shipment, and (b) MTO had paid to Rillfung the amount of the proposed drawdown. Mr. Mok claims that the inspection certificate did not come from MTO.

(ii) The signatures on the inspection certificate presented to the Bank are said by Rillfung not to conform with the signatures held on the Bank's file.

(iii) Among the documents presented to the Bank was a document dated 22nd March headed "Beneficiarys Certificate" on Kleen Green's notepaper. It purported to certify that Kleen Green had sent a full set of non-negotiable shipping documents directly to Rillfung by courier within 7 days of the shipment of the consignment. A package was admittedly delivered to Rillfung's office by couriers engaged by Kleen Green on 30th March, but to the extent that the package was intended to contain the documents to which the beneficiary certificate related, Rillfung claims that the beneficiary certificate was false in three respects :

(a) the addressee was Po Wei, whom Rillfung claims it had never heard of, not Rillfung;

(b) the package had been sent on 24th March, not by 22nd March; and

(c) most important of all, the package contained documents unrelated to the transaction and which were not shipping documents at all.

KLEEN GREEN'S CASE

11. Kleen Green's case is set out in a series of affidavits sworn on 8th April, 7th June and 9th June by Mr. Anthony Ballantyne, Kleen Green's principal shareholder and executive director. According to Mr. Ballantyne, Kleen Green agreed to sell 120,000 litres of RLP to Po Wei. The agreement between Kleen Green and Po Wei dated 21st November 1994 was produced by Kleen Green's solicitors at a meeting with Rillfung's solicitors on the day after the order of Bewley J. Mr. Ballantyne claims that he dealt with a Mr. Zhou Rong Ye, who had told him that Po Wei was involved with, or a subsidiary of, Rillfung. That was why it was Rillfung who was to open a letter of credit in favour of Kleen Green for the payment of the whole of the purchase price.

12. After the first consignment had been shipped to Hong Kong, and Kleen Green had been paid the sum of US$63,300.00 under the letter of credit, Mr. Ballantyne claims that Mr. Zhou telephoned him, and said that he was sending a representative to New Zealand in order to inspect the second consignment. A few days later, Mr. Ballantyne was visited by a Mr. Roger Black who claimed to be that representative. He took samples of the consignment, and in due course gave Mr. Ballantyne a pre-signed inspection certificate purportedly issued by Rillfung. Eventually, the consignment was shipped to Hong Kong, and the inspection certificate (whose authenticity Mr. Ballantyne claims he had no reason to doubt) was presented to the Bank.

13. However, Mr. Ballantyne accepts for the purposes of this summons that the package delivered to Rillfung's office did not contain the shipping documents at all. Mr. Ballantyne's explanation for that is that Mr. Black volunteered to help with the preparation of the paper work, and it was Mr. Black who had prepared the courier package. Mr. Ballantyne claims to have been as surprised as everyone else when he was subsequently told that the courier package had in fact contained papers relating to a local New Zealand marine society. Unfortunately for Kleen Green, however, if Mr. Black ever existed, he has now disappeared. Mr. Ballantyne vouches for his existence by the production of hotel bills in the name of Mr. Black incurred by him while he was in New Zealand, but those bills give an address for Mr. Black in Melbourne where he is not known.

THE POSSIBLE SCENARIOS

14. I turn to the various possibilities which arise from these primary facts. At one stage, Kleen Green's solicitors suggested as a possible scenario that the inspection certificate was a genuine one issued by Rillfung, but that Po Wei no longer wanted to purchase the RLP, and Rillfung therefore falsely claimed that the inspection certificate had been forged in order to enable Po Wei to get out of the agreement. I note that Mr. Ballantyne does not lend his name to this scenario in any of his affidavits. For my part, I do not believe that it is a realistic or reasonable inference to be drawn from the primary facts. If Po Wei was associated with Rillfung and wanted to get out of the agreement, it would have been infinitely easier for Rillfung not to issue the inspection certificate at all. To issue it, and then to assert almost in the same breath that it is a forgery, simply does not make sense. In any event, the argument ignores the beneficiary certificate, which even Mr. Ballantyne accepts for present purposes was false, even though, on Kleen Green's case, he was not to know that at the time. If Rillfung was falsely claiming that the inspection certificate had been forged, Rillfung and Po Wei must have been responsible for causing the beneficiary certificate to be false. They could have only done that if they were associated with Mr. Black, and if they had put Mr. Black up to pack the courier package with irrelevant documents. There could have been no guarantee that Mr. Black would have been able to do that, because Mr. Ballantyne might have been unwilling to allow the courier package to be packed by anyone other than him.

15. The fact of the matter is that, if the inspection certificate did not come from Rillfung, someone has attempted to persuade the Bank to make payments to Kleen Green under the letter of credit when Kleen Green was not entitled to such payments. There are, as I see it, only two possibilities :

(i) Rillfung is the victim of a scam by Kleen Green to obtain payment under the letter of credit of the sum of US$3,734,700.00 to which Kleen Green knew that it was not entitled. On this scenario, the inspection certificate presented to the Bank was created by, or on the instructions of, Kleen Green. After it had been presented to the Bank, Mr. Ballantyne would have known that it would only be a matter of a few days before he would be asked to explain where he had got the inspection certificate from. He had already worked out his story about Mr. Black. On this scenario, Mr. Black was an unidentified accomplice of his. His adoption of the persona of Mr. Black enabled Mr. Ballantyne to shift the forgery of the inspection certificate and the falsity of the beneficiary certificate onto someone else. It has to be said that since the second consignment was in fact shipped to Hong Kong, it is surprising that it was thought necessary for the courier package to contain irrelevant documents rather than the shipping documents. But that this was the scam which took place is, in my view, a realistic or reasonable inference to be drawn from the primary facts on which Rillfung relies.

(ii) Both Rillfung and Kleen Green are the victims of a scam by Po Wei, Mr. Zhou, Mr. Black and possibly Mr. Chow, though since Chow is the Cantonese equivalent of Zhou, Mr. Jat Siew Tong for Kleen Green speculates that Mr. Zhou and Mr. Chow might be one and the same man. On this scenario, the inspection certificate presented to the Bank was created by them or on their instructions. This scenario relies on the fact that at the same time as Kleen Green agreed to sell the RLP to Po Wei, Po Wei agreed in a back-to-back deal to sell 1,000 kg. of wild ginseng to Kleen Green for US$2,620,000.00. Payment was required to be made by Kleen Green prior to delivery. That agreement, also dated 21st November 1994, is exhibited to one of Mr. Ballantyne's affidavits. Part of the sum to be obtained from the Bank by the forged inspection certificate and the false beneficiary certificate would be used by Kleen Green to pay Po Wei for the ginseng which would never be delivered. Rillfung would be defrauded out of the sum paid by the Bank to Kleen Green, and Kleen Green would be defrauded out of the sum used to pay for the ginseng. It is noteworthy that there is no evidence before me as to how Po Wei came to deal with Kleen Green in the first place, and there are a number of features of Mr. Ballantyne's version of events which I find surprising at first blush. However, although I think Mr. Ballantyne's scenario is far less plausible than that of Rillfung, that this was the scam which took place is, in my view, not an altogether unrealistic or unreasonable inference to be drawn from the facts on which Kleen Green relies.

16. The question to be decided at trial is whether the primary facts on which Kleen Green relies are true. For the reasons I have given, I cannot say that the scenario which Rillfung asserts is the only realistic or reasonable inference to be drawn from the different sets of facts on which Rillfung and Kleen Green respectively rely. Having said that, though, the significant feature of both scenarios is that they both involve a fraud on Rillfung.

RILLFUNG'S CLAIM FOR THE CONTINUATION OF THE INJUNCTION AGAINST THE BANK

17. It is, I think, well established that a bank's customer who opens a letter of credit can only obtain an injunction restraining the bank from making payments to the beneficiary under the letter of credit if there is clear evidence before the Court that

(i) the demand by the beneficiary for payment under the letter of credit constituted a fraud on the bank's customer,

(ii) the beneficiary was a party to the fraud, and

(iii) the bank knew that the demand for payment constituted a fraud on its customer on the part of the beneficiary :

see United City Merchants (Investments) Ltd. v. Royal Bank of Canada [1983] A.C. 168.

18. It is important to remember that I am not concerned today with whether there was clear evidence of these three matters before Bewley J. or Deputy Judge Wong on 3rd and 10th April respectively. That is now water under the bridge. But for a separate and free-standing point taken by Mr. Barrie Barlow for the Bank, what I would have had to decide was whether there is clear evidence today of those three matters. That is because it is the Bank's state of knowledge on the date when an injunction is sought rather than on the date when the payment was demanded which is relevant (see Bolivinter Oil S.A. v. Chase Manhattan Bank [1984] 1 Lloyd's Rep. 251 at p. 256, and Deutshe Ruckversicherung A.G. v. Walbook Insurance Co. Ltd. [1994] 4 All E.R. 181 at p. 195h-j).

19. However, the point taken by Mr. Barlow is that even if there had today been clear evidence of those three relevant matters, it is wholly inappropriate for me to continue the injunction against the Bank. Two reasons are advanced for that. First, Rillfung can achieve what it wants by an appropriate injunction against Kleen Green who Rillfung claims is the real villain of the piece. An injunction restraining Kleen Green from making further demands for payment under the letter of credit would have to be observed by the Bank, because once an injunction had been served on the Bank, the Bank would have to comply with its terms. The success of that argument depends on whether Rillfung can indeed obtain interlocutory relief against Kleen Green, and I shall be turning to that issue shortly.

20. It is the Bank's second argument which I find the more compelling. If the injunction is not continued, the Bank will now have to decide whether

(a) the inspection certificate appears on its face to accord with the terms of the letter of credit, and

(b) if it does, whether Kleen Green knew, when it presented the documents to the Bank, either that the inspection certificate was a forgery or that the beneficiary certificate was false in a material respect.

Suppose the Bank decides to make payments to Kleen Green under the letter of credit. If it is found at trial to have been entitled to do so, Rillfung would have failed to establish its cause of action against the Bank, and for that reason an injunction at the interlocutory stage would have been inappropriate. But if the Bank is found at trial to have made payments to Kleen Green negligently or in breach of its duty to Rillfung, Rillfung's remedy against the Bank for the Bank's negligence or breach of duty will be in damages. That remedy will be entirely adequate because the Bank would undoubtedly be good for any losses for which it is answerable. I do not see any answer to this point. It was regarded, in my view rightly, as insuperable by the Court of Appeal in G.K.N. Contractors Ltd. v. Lloyds Bank PLC (1985) 30 B.L.R. 48.

21. For that reason, and without commenting on (a) whether there was clear evidence of the three relevant matters before Bewley J. and Deputy Judge Wong on 3rd April and 10th April respectively, or (b) whether there is clear evidence today of the three relevant matters, Rillfung's application to continue the injunction against the Bank must be dismissed.

RILLFUNG'S CLAIM FOR AN INJUNCTION AGAINST KLEEN GREEN

22. As an alternative to its claim for an injunction against the Bank, Rillfung seeks an injunction against Kleen Green restraining it from demanding any further payment under the letter of credit. That is the second summons before me today. There is, in my judgment, no difficulty whatsoever in identifying Rillfung's cause of action against Kleen Green. Its cause of action is in deceit. If the inspection certificate was forged by, or on the instructions of, Kleen Green, and if the beneficiary certificate was false to Kleen Green's knowledge, Kleen Green, by presenting them to the Bank, knowingly made false representations to the Bank, namely that the inspection certificate had been issued by Rillfung, and that the shipping documents had been sent to Rillfung, with the intention that the Bank should act on those representations by making the appropriate payments under the letter of credit, thereby causing damage to Rillfung in consequence of the Bank's reliance upon those representations, because Rillfung's account with the Bank would be debited with those payments.

23. The difficult question is the standard of proof required to justify interlocutory relief. In simple terms, the issue is :

(a) whether Rillfung is only required to establish that it is arguable that the fraud which it alleges is a reasonable or realistic inference to be drawn from the primary facts, which Rillfung can plainly do in view of my finding that the fraud which Rillfung alleges is a realistic or reasonable inference which can be drawn from the primary facts on which it relies; or

(b) whether Rillfung must establish that it is arguable that the fraud which it alleges is the only realistic or reasonable inference which can be drawn from the primary facts, which Rillfung cannot do in view of my finding that the fraud which Kleen Green alleges is not an unreasonable or unrealistic inference to be drawn from the primary facts on which Kleen Green relies.

I am satisfied that the test is the more stringent of the two. In reaching that conclusion, I adopt with gratitude the powerful analysis of the position by Philips J. in Deutshe Ruckversicherung at pp. 194b-197f. The adoption of the less stringent test, which is no more than the application of the familiar American Cyanamidtest to documentary credits, will rob the beneficiary of much of the benefit which the letter of credit is intended to bestow. As Deputy Judge Stock Q.C. (as he then was) said in his compelling judgment in Odyssey International Ltd. v. Alpine Designs Corporation (HCA 1255/92),

"Documentary credits have been described as the life blood of international commerce. The courts have been at pains to emphasise the autonomy of the documentary credit, ... and to warn how readily would be undermined the certainty which they lend to commercial transactions were the courts to intervene in other than the clearest cases."

In this connection, I have not found the recent decision of the Court of Appeal in Themehelp Ltd. v. West ("The Times", 2nd May 1995) to be of assistance. The report is so abbreviated that I cannot say with confidence what the ratio of the case is.

24. For the reasons I have given, Rillfung cannot satisfy this more stringent test in relation to the fraud which it alleges, because it cannot establish that it is arguable that the fraud which it alleges is the only realistic or reasonable inference which can be drawn from the primary facts. However, the matter does not end there, because Mr. Russell Coleman for Rillfung argues that Rillfung's cause of action for deceit also arises on the fraud which Kleen Green alleges is a realistic or reasonable inference to be drawn from the primary facts. On Kleen Green's own case, Mr. Ballantyne allowed Mr. Black to pack the contents of the courier package. Mr. Ballantyne did not therefore know whether the package contained the shipping documents. In these circumstances, it is at the very least strongly arguable by Rillfung that even if Mr. Ballantyne did not know that Kleen Green's representation in the beneficiary certificate that the shipping documents had been sent was false, he was reckless as to whether that representation was true or false. In other words, it is arguable that, even on Kleen Green's version of the facts, fraud in the sense of recklessness as to the truth of the contents of the beneficiary certificate is a realistic or reasonable inference to be drawn from the primary facts. In my judgment, that is a sufficient basis on which to grant Rillfung the interlocutory relief it seeks against Kleen Green, subject, of course, to the balance of convenience, and to the fact that the grant of an interlocutory injunction is an entirely discretionary remedy.

25. Mr. Jat beguilingly argues that Rillfung has disentitled itself from discretionary injunctive relief by its own conduct in (a) representing to the Bank in the application form for the letter of credit that it was the buyer of the RLP, or somehow associated with the buyer, rather than merely financing its purchase, and (b) representing to the Bank in the inspection certificate it signed that it had inspected the goods. I reject these complaints. I discern no representation in the application form for the letter of credit of the kind alleged. It may be that Rillfung falsely represented to the Bank that it had inspected the first consignment of the goods, but the current dispute relates to the second consignment. If the inspection certificate relating to the second consignment did not come from Rillfung, the fact that it purported to certify that Rillfung had inspected the goods cannot be a matter of criticism of Rillfung.

26. I turn to the balance of convenience. Rillfung's claim for damages against Kleen Green would not be an adequate remedy for Rillfung. That is because it is accepted that Kleen Green is not a company with significant assets, and it would not therefore be able to repay the sum of US$3,734,700.00 plus interest and costs which it would have to pay to Rillfung if no injunction was granted, if the Bank decided to pay that sum to Kleen Green under the letter of credit, but if at the expedited trial of the action in, say, September or October, Rillfung's claim for damages for deceit was upheld. Although Kleen Green will not, of course, be paying the sum of US$2,620,000.00 for the ginseng, it would no doubt have to use some of the money to pay its trade creditors, the cost of the raw materials from which the RLP was manufactured, the manufacturing costs, the shipping costs and the costs of marketing and advertising its products. It may well be that there will be little left of the money by the time the action is heard.

27. On the other hand, if an injunction is granted which has the effect of preventing the Bank from making further payments to Kleen Green under the letter of credit, but if at the trial of the action Rillfung's claim for damages for deceit was dismissed, Kleen Green would be looking to Rillfung's cross-undertaking as to damages to compensate it for such losses as it shall have sustained by not having had the sum of US$3,734,700.00 in the intervening period (assuming, of course, that the Bank would have made further payments under the letter of credit in the absence of an injunction). Would that cross-undertaking as to damages be an adequate remedy for Kleen Green? I think it would, provided that it was fortified sufficiently. There is a sum in excess of US$700,000.00 in one of the accounts held by Rillfung with the Bank, and Rillfung is prepared to undertake

(a) that it will not withdraw sums from that account so as to reduce the credit balance to below US$700,000.00 prior to the conclusion of the trial of the action; and

(b) that the sum of US$700,000.00 will, in the event of the dismissal of Rillfung's claim against Kleen Green, be available for enforcement by Kleen Green of any sum awarded in its favour on an inquiry as to the losses it has sustained as a result of any interlocutory injunction.

In addition, if Rillfung's holding company, Sinochem, is prepared to undertake that it will meet any award of damages awarded against Rillfung on its cross-undertaking as to damages in favour of Kleen Green, in the event of Rillfung itself not meeting that award, these combined undertakings would, in my judgment, meet any concern that Kleen Green would have had about the enforcement of such an award. I appreciate that it may be difficult to quantify Kleen Green's losses, but I do not believe that they will be impossible to assess.

28. Accordingly, provided that the undertakings to which I have referred are given, and provided that I am satisfied that Sinochem's undertaking is suitably fortified, the conclusion I have reached is that the injustice which Kleen Green would suffer if I restrain it from making further demands for payment under the letter of credit (but if it turns out at the trial that I should not have subjected it to that restraint) will be less than the injustice which Rillfung would suffer if I refuse to subject Kleen Green to such a restraint (but if it turns out at trial that I should have done so).

CONCLUSION

29. For these reasons, I propose to grant Rillfung an injunction against Kleen Green which has the effect of restraining Kleen Green from accepting any sums from the Bank under the letter of credit until the trial of the action or further order. I direct that there be a speedy trial of the action, and I propose to lay down a time-table for the parties to comply with to ensure that that order is not frustrated. Counsel obviously have to address me on the precise form which the injunction should take, and on the other directions which I should give. The injunction sought in Rillfung's summons against Kleen Green is clearly inappropriate in view of the Bank's view that no further documents need to be presented by Kleen Green, and that no further demand for payment needs to be made by it.

Representation:

Mr. Russell Coleman, inst'd by M/s. Sinclair Roche & Temperley, for the Plaintiff.

Mr. Barrie Barlow, inst'd by M/s. Koo & Partners, for the 1st Defendant.

Mr. Jat Siew Tong, inst'd by M/s. Herbert Smith, for the 2nd Defendant.