The Supreme Court held that a UK company, AMT, was not entitled to bring an action in England against a German firm alleging that it had induced the company's former clients to bring proceedings in Germany in breach of an English exclusive jurisdiction clause.
The Supreme Court held that the place where the "harmful event" had occurred for the purposes of Regulation 44/2001 Article 5(3) was Germany, where the company had incurred the expenditure of the litigation. Article 5(3) provides in part that, in matters relating to tort, a person may be sued in the courts for the place where "the harmful event occurred or may occur." The court dismissed AMT's argument that the relevant harm was the deprivation of the contractual benefit of dispute resolution in England under English law and refused to craft a special jurisdictional rule for the tort of inducing a breach of contract where the term breached was an exclusive jurisdiction clause.
AMT Futures Ltd V Marzillier, Dr Meier & Dr Guntner Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft Mbh [2017] UKSC 13
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