When contracting parties disagree, do more disputes arise:
- in relation to the contract;
- under it; or
- in connection with it?
If you’re drafting an arbitration clause or a jurisdiction clause, the answer, since 2007, is “Stop this hair-splitting; it reflects no credit on English law”.
Last month, a High Court judge extended this “anti-nitpicking approach”, as he called it, to interpreting another kind of clause (a release of claims in a settlement agreement).
Starlight Shipping Company v Allianz Marine & Aviation Versicherungs AG [2011] EWHC 3381 (Comm) 19 December 2011
Update: in 2014 the Court of Appeal upheld this judgment and expressly agreed with the judge on this point:
“… ever since the decision of the House of Lords in Fiona Trust v Privalov [2007] Bus LR 1719, fine distinctions between words such as “under” or “in relation to” should no longer be made, at any rate when one is construing arbitration clauses. Jurisdiction clauses are very similar to arbitration clauses (and, of course, appear in the Settlement Agreements with which this court is concerned); settlement clauses are analogous to both arbitration and jurisdiction clauses and should likewise be given a sensible commercial meaning …”
Starlight Shipping Company v Allianz Marine & Aviation Versicherungs AG [2014] EWCA Civ 1010 18 July 2014, paragraph 8.
