Allied Arab Bank Ltd v. Taj E1 Arefin Hjjar and Others

Case No.[1952] 2 QB 216[2018] EWHC 1902

Court

Date—

Judge—

Case Document

100%Judiciary

HCCL000009B/1987

1987 CL No. 9

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF HONG KONG

HIGH COURT

COMMERCIAL LIST

________________

BETWEEN :

	Allied Arab Bank Ltd	Plaintiffs
	and
(1)	Taj E1 Arefin Hajjar (Male)
(3)	UTG Investments (Far East) Ltd.
(4)	UTG Projects (China) Ltd.
(5)	UTG Industrial (HK) Ltd.
(6)	UTG Fujian Hotels Ltd.
(7)	UTG Xiamen Investments Ltd	Defendants

Coram: Deputy Judge Litton Q.C. in Chambers

Date of Hearing: 15th & 16th June 1987

Date of Delivery of Decision: 17th June, 1987

__________

DECISION

__________

1. This is an application by the Plaintiff Allied Arab Bank Ltd. pursuant to its summons dated 30 May 1987. The summons invokes the inherent jurisdiction of the Court. In terms, the application is deceptively simple. It seeks to extend the scope of an order made on 13 February 1987 by Mr. Justice Mortimer, regarding the use of documents by the Plaintiff in what has been described as parallel proceedings in England. The documents are identified in the summons as "all documents obtained in consequence of orders made in this action". The application is supported by an affidavit of Mr. Stokes, solicitor for the Plaintiff, the relevant paragraphs of which are 13 to 17.

2. Paragraph 14 says as follows : "The English proceedings have now reached a stage at which it is appropriate and necessary for the constitution of the actions to be changed. Both actions are brought on almost identical grounds, and so it is appropriate that they should be consolidated. For the reasons explained above, an application is to made to join Barclays to the consolidated English action as Plaintiffs."

3. What is apparently invoked in the application is the power of the Court to, as it were, fine tune an existing Order - that of the 13 February 1987 - so as to adjust the Hong Kong Order to the realities of the situation in England as far as the English litigation is concerned. The problem arises in this way. In the Order of the 13 February 1987, the use by the Plaintiffs of the documents is in these terms : "for the purpose of action no. 1987 A no. 114 in the High Court of Justice in England as presently constituted". And likewise, for the purposes of the Plaintiffs' action against Mrs. Fails Hajjar, as then constituted. If additional parties are to be added to the English proceedings, both as Plaintiffs and as Defendants, then plainly the Order of 13 February 1987 would cease have effect, the constitution of the English actions having in the meanwhile been changed.

4. The reasons for adding new Plaintiffs and new Defendants, are explained in Mr. Stokes' affidavit. As regards the new Defendants, he has put before the Court a considerable body of evidence to the effect that it is necessary and desirable that Mr. Shukri, the former Managing Director and Chief Executive of the bank, should be joined. He also deposes in paragraph 15 of his affidavit to the fact that "certain companies controlled by him" should also be added to the action as Defendants. As far as additional Plaintiffs are concerned, this arises because the debts which constitute one of the two main causes of action in the English proceedings have been assigned to Barclays Bank Plc, and a gentleman called Sheikh Adham. This apparently took place in December of 1984. My first reaction to the application was, "Why ever not?" I was inclined at first to regard it as a purely procedural and technical matter. If Mr. Justice Mortimer intended by his Order of 13 February 1987 that the prosecution of the Plaintiffs' case in England should be facilitated by the use of documents obtained by orders made in this Court, why should obstacles be now put in the Plaintiff's pray, for purely technical reasons, when the English actions are to be differently constituted?

5. However, after hearing Mr. Lindsay Q.C. counsel. for the 3rd to the 7th Defendants, it has become clear to me that the matter is by no means so simple, and that possibly fundamental questions covering the use of documents obtained by the execution of interlocutory orders, such use being outside the jurisdiction of the Court, are involved.

6. The documents covered by the Order are "all documents obtained in consequence of orders made in this action". To find out what are "documents obtained in consequence of orders made in this action" it is necessary for me to look more closely at the history of this matter. And briefly, it is as follows:

(1)

On the 20 January this year, the Plaintiff, then described as the intended Plaintiff, obtained an ex parte order from Mr. Justice Sears, which, in the first place, was a Mareva Injunction; the effect of which was to freeze all the assets of the Defendants. The assets are then particularized as:

	(a)	monies or balances or facilities forming part of or appertaining to any account at any bank etc; and
	(b)	any debts or balances upon any account owed to the Defendant by any person.

By paragraph (3) of the ex parte order, two chartered accountants were appointed as receivers of the Defendants; the apparent intention of which, as far as I can judge, was to reinforce the Mareva Injunction, the receivers being appointed to assist in the location of assets, and to make the Mareva Injunction effective. Paragraph

(4) of the ex parte order then requires the Defendants to give information to the receivers concerning "the nature of all the assets and effects" of these Defendants, and goes on to require the Defendants to permit the receivers not only to inspect documents and papers, and take copies, but also requires the Defendants to deliver over to the receivers all such documents and papers. Now, it seems to me inconceivable that in making that ex parte order, Mr. Justice Sears ever intended that the Plaintiffs be given a procedural advantage in the litigation as regards discovery : the apparent purpose of the receivers' appointment being to assist in the execution of the Mareva injunction.

	(2)	However, what apparently happened was this, that upon the receivers taking office, documents and copies of documents (upon being taken into possession by the receivers) were handed over to the Plaintiffs' solicitors. The Defendants, not surprisingly, complained of such act. They alleged that it was an abuse of the ex parte order. They complained that the receivers were treating the Plaintiffs' solicitors as if they were the receivers' solicitors, whereas in truth, what the order required was for the receivers to adopt a posture of neutrality. This resulted in an application being made to the Court and a consent order being made on 28 January 1987. The parties to that order were not only the Plaintiffs, but the Plaintiffs' solicitors in that they, the solicitors, gave undertakings to the Court that as the Plaintiffs' solicitors, they would not "from the date hereof" (that is 28 January 1987) "send, produce, transmit or pass to the Plaintiff any of the information, books, papers, documents etc., obtained from the receivers". And then by consent, there were orders to the effect that the receivers themselves would not "send transmit or pass" to the Plaintiff, or the Plaintiffs' solicitors, any further documents or information.
	(3)	Now, by that time, that is to say 28 January 1987, many documents, the property of the Defendants, had got into the following hands :

	(i)	the receivers, that is to say, the two chartered accountants;
	(ii)	the firm, in which they were apparently partners, Messrs. Ernst and Whinney;
	(iii)	the Plaintiffs' solicitors, and
	(iv)	the plaintiff bank itself.

(4)

The hearing of the inter partes summons, consequent upon the Mareva Injunction, then came before Mr. Justice Mortimer on the 13 February 1987. A series of orders were made on that day. The first is a consent order, the construction of which I find a little difficult. Part C of that order is of particular relevance to the matter before me; it is by Part C of that order that the judge dealt with the use of the documents and the information contained in such documents.

Part C deals with the use of documents as have been received by the Plaintiffs' solicitors, and as to that C(i) says that the documents should be retained by the Plaintiffs' solicitors and not be further disclosed except for the "purposes of seeking legal advice on behalf of the Plaintiff" by which I take to mean seeking advice such as counsel's opinion.

C(ii) says that such documents "shall not be used or relied on in any way or in any jurisdiction by the Plaintiff" as against D3 to D7 or any of the other 46 persons described in a Schedule, except to the extent that the same became available to the Plaintiff by ordinary discovery, and "subject in such event to the grant of such leave to use out of Hong Kong in other proceedings as may be appropriate".

C(iii) of the order says that these documents "shall not be used or relied on in any way against any other parties without the leave of the Court in Hong Kong having been first obtained". As to the documents not in the hands of the Plaintiffs' solicitors, that is to say, documents which might be in the. hands of the Plaintiff, or in the hands of the receivers; as far as I understand the consent order of the 13 February 1987, those documents were ordered to be returned to the Defendants' solicitors for the purpose of delivery to the Court for sealing and retention. There has then since been lodged with the Court an envelope which has been sealed. I presume it contains the documents referred to in Part B of the consent order.

(5)

I have recited above the terms of Part C(iii) of the order which prevents the use of the documents without the leave of the Court in Hong Kong having first been obtained. This in effect foreshadows an application which was then made on the same day, which resulted in the order of 13 February 1987, the scope of which the Plaintiff now seeks to extend by the application before me. It is perhaps worth noting that this order is not by consent, though, as I was told yesterday, the Defendants adopted a posture of no opposition.

7. So much for the history of the matter. As I mentioned earlier, the present application before me invokes the inherent jurisdiction of the Court : by that, as I understand it, is meant jurisdiction reposing in the Court to control its own process, to see that there is no abuse. Now I note that I am not concerned in this application with controlling the use of documents within the jurisdiction of this Court, as to which the Court has ample power, and there is a considerable body of case law on the point, the loading authority being the case of Harman -v- The Home Office [1983] AC p. 280. But the principles enunciated in Harman -v- Home Office are not really directly in point here. I am concerned not with the use of documents inside the jurisdiction of this Court for the purposes of litigation in Hong Kong; I am concerned with the use of documents outside. 'And' as to this, no authority has in fact been cited, and counsel could only advance their arguments by analogy.

8. Now the Plaintiff says this. There is in fact precedent in this very case for the kind of order which they seek. They refer to the following :

	(1)	There was an order made by Hirst J on 16 January 1987 in Action A 114 of 1987 whereby be granted leave to the Plaintiff bank to use documents which had come into the hands of the Plaintiff in the English proceedings for the purpose of proceedings in Hong Kong. The commencement of the Hong Kong proceedings followed four days after the making of Mr. Justice Hirst's order.
	(2)	They refer to the fact that on the 27 April this year, Mr. Justice Mortimer allowed the Plaintiff bank to use the very documents involved in the present application in relation to legal proceedings in the United States; proceedings in which the present Defendants were not parties, but strangers were, that is to say, Mr. Hajjar, Mrs. Hajjar and a concern or entity registered in Lichenstein called Flagstone Establishment. The application was apparently opposed, but I have not been referred to any reasons expressed by Mr. Justice Mortimer whereby the order was granted.

9. Now the application dated 30 May 1987 at at first formulated extraordinarily wide. It sought leave to use the documents, notwithstanding that the constitution of the English actions be changed by "the addition and/or deletion of one or more Plaintiffs and/or Defendants and/or by consolidation with one or more other actions". But this has since been considerably refined. Last Friday Mr. Wads-worth Q.C. handed up to the Court a proposed order in which they have confined the addition of Plaintiffs to the actions as the addition of "Barclays Bank Plc and/or Sheikh Adham as Plaintiffs".

10. As regards the addition of Defendants, Mr. Wadsworth told me that the proposal was to add Mr. Shukri and two companies controlled by him : a Jersey company with the name Century, and another company called Century SA, and a gentleman called Stokes. This was further refined by Mr. Wong, junior counsel for the Plaintiff in presenting the arguments yesterday, when he confined the addition of further Defendants to three parties, namely Shukri, Century SA and Stokes.

11. The proposed order handed up by Mr. Wadsworth seeks leave to use for the purpose of the English proceedings the documents obtained in consequence of orders made in Hong Kong, notwithstanding the re-constitution of the English proceedings as I have outlined above, and then the proposed order goes on to say : "provided always that such material shall not be used otherwise than in accordance with the consent order of this court made by the Honourable Mr. Justice Mortimer on 13 February 1987". I confess to being slightly mystified by this proviso. I have searched in vain in the order of 13 February 1987 for some other restriction on use, and I have not been able to find any; other than, I suppose, the inherent jurisdiction of the Court to ensure that its process is not abused.

12. Now, the Defendants say this. The order of 13 February 1987, allowing the use of documents in the Action as then constituted was the outer limit of what they said they would not oppose. They initially did complain about the legality of both the obtaining of the documents and the use of information contained therein, and the properity of the receivers handing over the documents to the Plaintiffs' solicitors: this was of course in the context of the wider contest between the parties arising from the giving of the Mareva Injunction in the first place. However, says counsel for the Defendants, eventually what they agreed to, by the series of orders of 13 February 1987, was a "package deal". They were prepared to consent to the use by the Plaintiff bank of those documents, however their provenance, in the English proceedings "as presently constituted". That was the outer limit of what the Defendants were prepared to concede. And, they say, "as presently constituted", this meant that there was one Plaintiff only, Allied Arab Bank, and 51 Defendants. The action did not include the gentlemen named Sheikh Adham. The action did not include the former managing director of the bank, Mr. Shukri, nor any company allegedly controlled by him, and the action did not include the gentleman, Mr. Stokes, who apparently was a chief accountant employed in the UTC group.

13. These are formidable arguments.

14. It seems to me that in resolving this matter, I should look at the issue from first principles. Without burdening this judgment with the citation of copious authorities, the way I look at the matter is as follows:

	(1)	The documents and the information contained in these documents are undoubtedly the property of the Defendants. They and they alone, prima facie, are entitled to say who should have possession of the documents, and who should have access to the information contained in the documents.
	(2)	Mr. Justice Sears, by his ex parte order, could not have intended to make some fundamental inroad into the Defendants' rights of property in the documents and in the information contained therein.
	(3)	The ex parte order, however, was very wide. There was, for example, no limit as to the type of documents, or classes of documents, required to be delivered to the receivers. In all probabilities, therefore, the class or classes of documents were much wider than any documents which the Plaintiffs could conceivably have been entitled to inspect and make copies of for the purposes of Order 24 discovery.
	(4)	The receivers should have been playing a merely independant role and safe-guarding the documents and the information contained therein as receivers. The receivers were therefore arguably wrong when they handed the documents to the Plaintiffs, solicitors. This was, as Mr. Lindsay urges upon me, something collateral to the purpose for which the receivers were appointed.
	(5)	In these circumstances then, how far should the Court permit the use of the documents? The consent order itself severely restricts the scope of use in the way I have attempted to outline by reference to Part C of that order. The consent order merely foreshadowed an application to be made to the Court. And the order was then made containing those words "as presently constituted" which the Defendants say did not appear in the order by chance.

15. Now, I ask myself this question. Having regard to all that has gone before in this particular litigation, is this a proper case for me to attempt a fundamental appraisal or perhaps re-appraisal of the principles of law, governing the use of documents obtained in interlocutory proceedings, and particularly the use of such documents outside the jurisdiction? Or should I approach this matter from the point of view of practical realities, and resolve the matter upon this more humdrum plane?

16. Mr. Wong rightly points out to me that I am not sitting on appeal against Mr. Justice Sears' ex parte order. And he urges this point also upon me: Whether it be right or wrong for the Court to have allowed any use of the documents obtained in the circumstances of this case, in fact, as Mr. Wong says, the Defendants have virtually consented to such use, since they put up no opposition to the second order of 13 February 1987. In these circumstances, he asked, what logical reason is there for not extending the scope of the order, so that in the light of the realities of the situation in England, the documents can continue to be used? As far as the debt claim is concerned, Mr. Wong argues, there has, on the evidence before me, in fact been an assignment. Is it not right that the assignee or assignees be joined as Plaintiffs to prosecute the debt claim? As far as the conspiracy limb of the action is concerned, as Mr. Wong rightly points out, there is considerable weight of evidence before me to suggest that Mr. Shuhri was a conspirator; at least in the early stages of the conspiracy, to obtain money and banking facilities from the Plaintiff bank by bribes. And as to the proposed Defendant Stokes, there is also evidence to link him to a conspiracy to defraud.

17. I find considerable force in Mr. Wong's submissions. On the other hand, I have to bear in mind that as far as the English proceedings are concerned, the 3rd to the 7th Defendants are not involved in any debt claim. So that, for example, in ordinary discovery under Order 24, as far as the issues between the Plaintiff bank and the Defendants D3 to D7 are concerned, there would be no "matter in question" in terms of Order 24 between the bank and these Defendants in relation to the debt claim. So, one could rhetorically ask, why should the Plaintiff have possession of documents which might advance their debt claim documents belonging to the Defendants - when in the course of that litigation in the normal event the Plaintiff would not have been entitled to discovery of such documents?

18. Now as far as the conspiracy limb of the Plaintiffs' case is concerned, D3 to D7 are not involved as alleged conspirators With Shukri or with Stokes. At least, that is not as I understand the position to be. So it is quite possible that even in relation to the conspiracy averments, ordinary discovery under Order 24 would not have required D3 to D7 to make disclosures of the documents covered by the present application Mr. Lindsay cites to me a passage in the judgment of Lord Roskill in Home Office -v- Harman at page 326 in which Lord Roskill says "I find it difficult to think of circumstances in which the Court might be willing to give such leave, that is to say, leave to use documents in favour of a stranger and against the wishes of the owner of the documents". Here, Mr. Lindsay says, is the very instance where a Plaintiff is seeking leave to use documents in favour of a stranger, such as, for example, Sheikh Adham, and against the wishes of the owner of the documents.

19. However, much of the points which have troubled me could he said to have been apparent at the time when the order of 13 February 1987 was made. Moreover, the same points would have emerged at the time when the order of 27 April 1987 was made concerning the use of the same documents in the U.S. proceedings against strangers including Flagstone Establishment.

20. Now, if I did not accede to the Plaintiffs' application here, the Plaintiffs would be put in a very awkward position. There is the present restriction on the use of documents restricting them to such use in the English actions "as presently constituted". If I did not accede to the Plaintiffs' application, it would mean either:

(1)

that they would be forced to abandon their proposal to join the additional parties, so as to keep the actions "as presently constituted"; or

(2)

to go ahead with their proposal to amend and thereby lose the advantage of the 13 February order as regards the use of documents.

21. Now I see no reason in justice to put the Plaintiff bank in that position, unless the principles for which Mr. Lindsay argues were in terms very strong if not absolute. The question that troubles me in this. Is it too late in this present litigation to re-examine the matter from the point of view of principles'. I confess to having entertained the gravest misgivings as to whether it is right from the point of view of fundamental principles to give the Plaintiffs any greater latitude as to the use of the documents, having regard to the way in which the documents got into the Plaintiffs' hands in the first place.

22. Further, a number of fundamental points have occurred to me. Firstly, what is the basis of my jurisdiction? Is it some notion of comity between Courts of different jurisdictions, so that the Courts would assist each other in their respective due processes? Now this was not so argued. (2) Is the extension of the order of 13 February 1987 for the use of documents in the reconstituted English proceedings based upon the case of Norwich Pharmacal? Now I can understand that when Mr. Justice Hirst gave leave on 16 January 1987 for the documents obtained in the English proceedings to be use in Hong Kong, it might have been based upon the principles stated in the Norwich Pharmacal case, to enable the Plaintiff to vindicate its legal rights against third party wrongdoers in Hong Kong. As I understand it, the Norwich Pharmacal case is not necessarily confined to wrongs within the jurisdiction.

23. But the basis for Mr. Justice Hirst's order of 16 January has not been explained. And this is not an avenue I can explore : if the Norwich Pharmacal principle be the juridical plank upon which the application rests, then it can not really help the Plaintiff bank here because last week I ordered that the Norwich Pharmacal cause of action be struck out, and any relief based thereon be dismissed.

	(3)	Is it right to allow the Plaintiffs to use documents and information which have been obtained in the way I have outlined above? That is to say documents, and information contained in such documents, which in all probabilities the Plaintiff could not have obtained either upon ordinary Order 24 discovery or upon the pursuit of a Norwich Pharmacal claim.
		As far as ordinary discovery is concerned the documents, and information contained in the documents, would have been confined to "matters in issue between the parties". And as to the Norwich claim, it would have been confined to information concerning the identity of wrongdoers in the first place, and information to assist the Plaintiff in order to vindicate its legal rights against the wrongdoers. Now, as has been seen, Mr. Justice Sears' Order of 20 January contains no such limitations.
	(4)	How is the Court in Hong Kong to police the use of the documents outside the jurisdiction, if there should be any abuse? Plainly, once I extend the scope of the order as sought, the gentleman Sheikh Adham, for example, would be entitled to use the documents. And yet there is no proposal in Hong Kong to join him as a party. I do not suggest that he would abuse the order. But, as was forensically put, if there should be an abuse, how is this court to deal with it, when he might not never be a party to the proceedings in Hong Kong?

(5)

I note that the application invokes the inherent jurisdiction of the Court. I am not quite sure exactly what aspect of the inherent jurisdiction is invoked. However, the points put forward on behalf of the Defendants have not been on the basis that I lack jurisdiction to extend the order of 13 February 1987, but that simply that I ought not in the circumstances of this case do so. So any doubts which I may have entertained in relation to may jurisdiction, I ought to leave aside.

24. Weighing the matter up the tray I have done, as to whether I should simply look at the practicalities of the litigation before me, or to re-examine the matter from first principles, I have finally come to the view that I should look at the matter from the point of view of practicalities.

25. I feel that it is not appropriate in the present state of this litigation for me to re-examine the vires of the court afresh; it would be wiser to learn it to another Court hereafter to examine the scope and propriety of an order such as that of 13 February 1987.

26. In my judgment any inroad which has been made into the confidentiality of the documents and information contained therein, which might be harmful to the Defendants, has already been made. By the order of 13 February 1987, the Plaintiff is entitled to use in the English proceedings the documents obtained. If they have used the documents, or were to use the documents hereafter, then presumably those documents would be discoverable in the litigation to all 46 other Defendants.

27. In these circumstances, it seems to me a little unrealistic for the Defendants to put forward any case based upon breach of confidentiality.

28. Weighing up the matter as best I can, and considering the practicalities of the case, I have come to the view that it would be wrong for me to refuse the application, the effect of which would be to hobble the English proceedings, and to force the Plaintiff to present its case in a way which the Plaintiff upon advice does not wish to present. I confess that I come to this conclusion with some regrets, because I do entertain considerable doubts as to whether from the point of view of principles, it is right to make the order sought.

29. Mr. Wong yesterday has confined his application still further, by defining what he means by "all documents obtained in consequence of orders made" by saying that this relates to pages 1 - 302 of a report, (or rather, by way of annexes to a report), made by the receivers in these proceedings. So the order I make is as follows :

The Plaintiffs do have leave for the purposes of Action No. A114 of 1987 and for the action commenced against Faiqa Hajjar in the High Court of Justice in England to use the following:

All documents obtained in consequence of orders made in this action, notwithstanding :

	a)	The consolidation of the two said actions in England.
	b)	The addition of Barclays Bank plc and/or Sheikh Adham as Plaintiffs hereto .
	c)	The discontinuance therein against any Defendant.
	d)	The addition thereto of further Defendants, namely Shukri, Century SA and Stokes.

30. Then I would add the documents referred to above, being the documents numbered pages 1 to 302 annexed to the report of the receivers.

31. As regards the proviso, whilst I have expressed doubt as to its meaning, since Mr. Lindsay in fact said that he would have pressed for its retention had I proposed to have it deleted, it is I think in the circumstances right that the proviso should be part of the order as well. Since giving judgment, Mr. Wong for the Plaintiff tells me that he had made an error as regards the name of the Societ'e Anonyme which I had been told was Century SA. He now tells me that in fact the name should be Sanctuary SA. It is obviously right that the judgment should reflect the correct name of the company allegedly controlled by Shukri.

32. Mr. Wong asked me to add a further company, and that is Sanctuary Limited. This, as I understand it is a Jersey company which had been referred to by Mr. Wadsworth when he handed up the proposed order on Friday. That being the position, and whilst the application which Mr. Wong makes at the conclusion. of the judgment simply underlines the somewhat unsatisfactory way in which the matter comes before me, it would be consistent with the judgment I have just given that the addition of the company Sanctuary Ltd. should be allowed to be made.

33. Accordingly the small (d) of the Order will then read : the addition thereto of further Defendants namely : Shukri, Sanctuary Ltd, Sanctuary SA and Stokes.

34. I will now hear the parties as to costs.

35. As to the costs of this application, I had in the course of argument already commented on the somewhat ambulatory nature of this application which seems to have shifted ground in the course of presentation and argument. And indeed it was not until after I gave judgment just now that the insertion of yet another Defendant, Sanctuary Ltd., was sought, although this was foreshadowed by what Mr. Wadsworth said last Friday. Having regard to all the circumstances, and accepting there is an element of rough justice in any order for costs which I make, the order that I make is that there should be no order as to costs on this application, including the hearing.

36. Mr. Lindsay for the Defendant firstly seeks leave to appeal, if this be necessary and secondly for a stay pending appeal. Having heard the parties on these matters the order I make is as follows:

	(1)	That the Defendant be given leave to appeal-if such leave be necessary, and
	(2)	That there should be a stay of my order pending appeal. The stay to extend to a period expiring 14 days after the formal order in this application and the formal order in the strike-out application have been drawn and perfected. The stay thereafter is to continue if notice of appeal against the present order should have been lodged; such stay to continue until further order.
	(3)	Liberty to the parties to apply, in particular, liberty to the Plaintiff to apply for a removal of the stay pending appeal.

	(Henry Litton)
	Deputy High Court Judge

Representation:

Mr. James Wadsworth Q.C. & Mr. Ronny Wong instructed by Messrs. Richard Butler for the Plaintiff.

Mr. John Lindsay Q.C. & Mr. Winston Poon instructed by Messrs. McKenna & Co. for 3rd to 7th Defendant.

Cited by 8 cases

Other judgments that cite this case

Robert Hung Yuen Chan v. Hongkong Standard Newspapers Ltd and Others

High Court CFI

Full analysis

25 Jul 1996

Antwerp Diamond Bank N.V. v. Gaurang Ramesh Paymaster t/a Rolling Stone

High Court CFI29 Oct 2010

Great Harvest Property Investment Ltd v. Ho Freeman Chi Man and Others

High Court CFI22 Feb 2012

Waddington Ltd v. Chan Chun Hoo Thomas and Others

High Court CFI18 Dec 2013