Mr Justice Barling has upheld an application by Mr Gennadiy Bogolyubov, a Ukrainian businessman, challenging the English Court’s jurisdiction to try a claim by Mr Vadim Shulman against him and Mr Igor Kolomoisky.
The principal question was whether Mr Bogolyubov, who had previously been domiciled in England, had by the date of the claim form done enough to cease to be domiciled in England and to become domiciled in Switzerland for the purposes of Article 2 of the Lugano Convention 2007. Mr Bogolyubov’s case was that his departure from England was prompted in part by being targeted as an anchor defendant for litigation before the English Courts that otherwise had nothing to do with England.
The application represented an early opportunity for the High Court to consider the meaning of the “good arguable case” threshold in jurisdiction cases in light of the observations of the Supreme Court in Four Seasons Holdings Incorporated v Brownlie [2018] 1 WLR 192. The Supreme Court’s decision was handed down on the second day of the hearing of the application.
The judgment contains (at paragraph 28) a summary of the principles to be derived from the case-law in assessing whether or not an individual has ceased to be resident in England for jurisdiction purposes.
Conall Patton acted (with Ali Malek QC and Pia Dutton) for Mr Bogolyubov.
The full judgment can be accessed here.