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On 21 February 2007, the English House of Lords delivered itsjudgment in the case of West Tankers Inc. v RAS Riunione Adriatica diSicurta SpA and others [2007] UKHL 4. The question in the case waswhether a court of a Member State of the European Union may grantan injunction against a person bound by an arbitration agreement torestrain him from commencing or prosecuting proceedings in breach ofthat agreement in a court of another Member State which hasjurisdiction to entertain the proceedings under EC Regulation 44/2001(the "Regulation").

THE FACTS
In August 2000, a vessel owned by West Tankers Inc. ("Tankers") andchartered to Erg Petroli SpA ("Erg") collided with a jetty owned by Ergat Syracuse and caused damage. The charterparty was stated to begoverned by English law and contained a clause providing for arbitrationin London.Erg made a claim upon its insurers, RAS Riunione Adriatica di SicurtaSpA (the "insurers"), up to the limit of its cover and commencedarbitration proceedings against Tankers for the excess.In July 2003, the insurers commenced proceedings against Tankersbefore the Tribunale di Siracusa to recover the amounts they had paidto Erg under the policy. They brought a delictual (tort) claim by virtueof their statutory right of subrogation to Erg's claims under Article1916 of the Italian Civil Code.In September 2004,Tankers commenced proceedings in England againstthe insurers claiming declarations that the dispute arose out of the charterparty and that the insurers, claiming by rightof subrogation, were therefore bound by theagreement to refer the claim to arbitrationin London.Tankers also claimed an injunction to restrain theinsurers from taking any further steps in relation tothe dispute except by way of arbitration andrequired them to discontinue the proceedingsin Syracuse.

HOUSE OF LORDS' DECISION
Although the House of Lords decided to refer thequestion to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), inhis judgment, Lord Hoffman summarized hisconclusions on the relevant European cases asfollows:The case of Gasser GmbH v MISAT Srl [2003](which decided that a court of a Member State onwhich exclusive jurisdiction has been conferredpursuant to the Regulation cannot issue aninjunction to restrain a party from prosecutingproceedings before the court of another MemberState if that court was first seised of the dispute)and the case of Turner v Grovit [2004] (whichdecided that the court of a Member State may notissue an injunction to restrain a party fromcommencing or prosecuting proceedings in anotherMember State which has jurisdiction under theRegulation, on the ground that the proceedings havebeen commenced in bad faith) are both based onthe proposition that the Regulation provides a setof uniform rules for the allocation of jurisdictionbetween Member States and that the courts of each Member State must trust the courts of otherMember States to apply those rules correctly.Arbitration is excluded from the Regulation byarticle 1(2)(d). The principles of the Regulation areconsidered to be unsuited to arbitration in whichthe parties are free to choose their forum andgoverning law.The case of Marc Rich & Co AG v Societa ItalianaImpianti PA [1991] held that the exclusion appliesnot only to arbitration proceedings themselves butalso to court proceedings in which the subjectmatter is arbitration.In Van Uden Maritime BV v Deco-Lin本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。