Berliner Bank v Karageorgis and Another
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 20 October 1995 |
| Date | 20 October 1995 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Commercial Court) |
Commercial Court of the Queen's Bench Division
Before Mr Justice Colman
Practice - trial of claim in absence of defendant - automatic judgment available
A plaintiff who sought a judgment which was likely to be enforceable outside the jurisdiction of the English courts, rather than judgment obtained under the automatic procedures provided by both Order 13 and Order 19 of the Rules of the Supreme Court, was entitled to invite the court to proceed to the trial of his claim, notwithstanding that he could by means of an automatic judgment obtain precisely the same judgment in the form which he would obtain as a result of a trial of the matter in open court.
It would be inappropriate that the court should decline to exercise its jurisdiction in such a case if there was material before it to suggest that a judgment obtained by the automatic method might well not be enforceable in foreign jurisdictions where the defendant was known to have assets or where there was a reasonable belief that he might have assets.
Mr Justice Colman so stated in the Commercial Court of the Queen's Bench Division when giving judgment on a claim by Berliner Bank against Mr Ioannis Karageorgis and Silver Carriers SS under guarantees provided in respect of certain banking facilities given by the bank to various shipowning companies in a group controlled by Mr Karageorgis and managed by Silver Carriers.
Mr Luke Parsons for the bank; the defendants did not appear and were not represented.
MR JUSTICE COLMAN said that after the defendants had been served with the writ in the present proceedings there was no acknowledgement of service.
The time for acknowledging service had expired and neither defendant had taken any steps directed to defending the claim.
The plaintiffs might have been expected to enter judgment in default of acknowledgement of service under Order 13, rule 1, which was the quick and necessarily automatic way to obtain judgment where the defendant had simply ignored the writ.
However, the plaintiff might well be in the position where the defendant was outside the jurisdiction of the English courts or at least where the defendant's assets were outside that jurisdiction. In those circumstances the plaintiff might well wish to have a judgment which he could enforce in overseas jurisdictions.
It was well known that default judgments such as one obtainable under Order 13 were in many...
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...the merits in the absence of CBS. The learned judge made the directions sought. He did so in accordance with his own decision in Berliner Bank v Karageorgis [1996] 1 Lloyd's Rep. 426 where he held that the court could order under its inherent jurisdiction that there be a trial on the merits......
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...to obtain a judgement that, if given, would be far more likely to be enforceable than a default judgement: see per Colman J in Berliner Bank AG v Karageorgis [1996] 1 Lloyd's Rep. 426 and per Field J in Habib Bank Ltd v Central Bank of Sudan [2006] EWHC 1767 (Comm), [2006] 2 Lloyd's Rep 41......
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