Publisher Citation: [2003] All ER (D) 25 (Aug)
Court: Commercial Court
Judge:

Morison J
Representation Brian Doctor QC and Sara Partington (instructed by Norton Rose) for the claimant.
  Richard Hacker QC and Mark Arnold (instructed by Jaswell Johnson) for the defendant.
Judgment Dates: 1 August 2003

Catchwords

Practice and procedure - Judgment - Summary judgment - Applicable law - Sharia law - Validity of defence - Arguable defence.

The Case

The court granted summary judgment to a claimant, rejecting the defendant's defence that the contract was dually governed by English and 'Sharia'; law, concluding that the intentions of the parties was not to ask a secular court to derive answers to their legal issue from religious writings. The court determined that there would be great controversy otherwise, since a secular English court was not suited to determining principles of disputed religious law and while the court could be used to settle disputes of foreign law, that was not the same as attempting to determine English law principles through religious law.

If you are a LexisLibrary subscriber you can read more about this case here.

Lexis®Library

  • The All England Law Reports comprises judgments with headnotes and catchwords indicating the area of law and key issues of the case prepared by legally qualified editorsFind AllER Reports
  • Cases related to this particular case that are related to, or discuss this caseView related cases
  • Commentary discussing this particular case from LexisLibrary's comprehensive range of titles including Butterworths, Halsbury's and TolleyView related commentary