Special Address by Justice Sir Bernard Rix at the SICC Seminar 2026

SPECIAL ADDRESS FOR SICC SEMINAR 2026

FROM MAREVA TO METAVERSE: INTERIM INJUNCTIONS IN CROSS-BORDER COMMERCIAL DISPUTES

13 January 2026

Justice Sir Bernard Rix

Chief Justice,

Justice Jeyaretnam,

Your Honours,

Friends,

All,

I feel greatly honoured by being invited to speak to you on the half-century anniversary of The Mareva, decided just over 50 years ago in the Court of Appeal in London. I am of course delighted to be asked, and even more to have survived these 50 years, and I thank the SICC for the invitation and for this ceremony.

But I am also made very anxious by the unworthy position which I hold.

After all, my involvement was serendipitous and slight, a mere accident. As I am sure most of you are aware, The Mareva had been shortly preceded by another case, Karageorgis, where the same interlocutory injunction under what was then section 45 of the Supreme Court of Judicature (Consolidation) Act had been requested, had been refused by Mr Justice Donaldson, that year’s commercial judge (we only had one commercial judge a year in those days!), but had then been granted on appeal by a court presided over by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Denning. Counsel in Karageorgis were the late Geoffrey Brice QC, and also Michael Howard who happily is still with us. To them must go the accolade of the invention. 

One month later, The Mareva was the next on the scene. Both cases, Karageorgis and Mareva, concerned a shipowner suing for unpaid charter hire against a one ship company. The Mareva came before Mr Justice Donaldson, on Friday 20 June. He was now armed with Lister v Stubbs, a court of appeal decision of 1890, which said this sort of thing could not be done. I was not involved at first instance. The case had been in the hands of another young member of my chambers, who was ambushed by Mr Justice Donaldson’s research. At the time of Karageorgis he, Mr Justice Donaldson, had vaguely recalled Lister v Stubbs in refusing an injunction in Karageorgis, and now he had tracked it down. He granted an injunction in Mareva only until Monday 23 June and only to give it enough air to reach the Court of Appeal. For some unknown reason I was given the brief that Friday, for the Monday in the Court of Appeal. I had never been in the Court of Appeal before. Indeed, I had hardly been on my feet in court before. That was the way in those days. I was a very young barrister.

I spent the weekend researching, seeking ways to mitigate the damage of Lister v Stubbs. I found some authority which suggested that the rule of Lister v Stubbs could be regarded as one of practice rather than principle, and that the width of the statute was in principle very wide, as long as a claimant had a legal or equitable right, as of course a shipowner claiming time charter hire certainly did. In truth, it was Lord Denning who did the heavy lifting, aided by Lord Justice Roskill and Lord Justice Ormrod.

I was therefore extremely fortunate to become associated with this novelty in our jurisprudence, what I think Lord Denning went on to call one of the most significant pieces of law reform in his lifetime.

Did I know what had happened that day 50 years ago? I think I knew we were at the cutting edge of new law. I half expected that my days would thenceforth be filled with briefs to get more such injunctions. But that did not happen. And I could not, and did not, anticipate the enormous growth of the law. As we now know, it could and has filled a book, several books. It has become part of England’s Civil Procedure Rules. Statute permits its grant in support of foreign litigation. It can be granted world wide. It carries with it the teeth of disclosure orders. It may even be available against non-parties. It covers assets which are not owned by a respondent, but are controlled by it. It has spread over the common law world, including Singapore, but not everywhere, and not in the United States. In Singapore, a recent example in support of arbitration has been upheld in the Court of Appeal in Novo Nordisk v KBP Biosciences.

Why is it known as the Mareva and not the Karageorgis? Well, there I did perhaps play a small role. For a while, the names Karageorgis and Mareva were being used interchangeably. Then, in a case of some substance, Pertamina, involving many parties, where I was involved, in the court of appeal Nicholas Phillips, the future President of the UK Supreme Court, asked me for a concession. I was perfectly willing to give it, but I stipulated for a condition. I asked Nicholas if he would always refer to the injunction as the Mareva injunction. He agreed. That I think may have tipped the balance. I feel a bit guilty about that. Like Pharaoh’s chief butler in the story of Joseph in Egypt, I remember my faults this day.

That said, I think the critical case for the injunction’s survival was The Siskina. That was the case where I sought to use the Mareva injunction over English assets as a gateway to jurisdiction in England over a respondent abroad. The House of Lords would have none of it, although it was within the plain words of England’s long-arm jurisdiction statute, then known as Order 11. Tony Lloyd QC, the future Lord Lloyd of Berwick, took the strategic decision not to challenge the Mareva injunction but to concentrate his fire on compatibility with the long-arm statute. I remember their Lordships, in particular Lord Hailsham, chuckling over the possible prospects of the Mareva, but being content to let it pass for the moment, since Tony Lloyd did not challenge it. Thus a negative becomes a positive. As it is, The Siskina has not fared all that well over the years; and in effect statute has allowed a freezing order to be granted in aid of foreign litigation. But why should assets in the court’s jurisdiction not be a ground of jurisdiction, as long of course as discretionary factors supported jurisdiction there? The civil law world recognises the presence of assets as a ground of jurisdiction. Is it a fear of asset flight? The law makes its choices.

Well, tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. Times change and we change in them. So then, what of the 50 year mark and the future? I could hazard many remarks, but I do not have time, and others are much more up to date than I am. It is a very powerful tool, called by Sir John Donaldson one of two nuclear weapons (I think he was referring to the Anton Piller order for the seizure of documents as the other). Perhaps, given the recent decision in England that the test for its applicability is not a good arguable case, as it remains in Singapore, but only a serious issue to be tried, it is too easy to obtain; but it is not for me to say. 50 years ago I thought that the real test was the danger of dissipation and thus of some special culpability, but that is not what has happened in England, although there again, in Singapore, I think a real risk of dissipation remains necessary. Of course, you do not need a freezing order against a company like BP, but with one ship companies and many other special purpose vehicles, perhaps dissipation, at least in the sense of asset concealment, is the presumed intent of any defendant to litigation? That remains I think for debate.

I would only say, and thus conclude, that it is of course important to keep a fair balance at the opening stage of litigation between a claimant who seeks relief on proper grounds and gives an undertaking in damages, and a respondent who has a business or a personal life to run, as well as litigation to defend, and should, as the order purports to allow, be permitted to do so. I would prefer myself to think of the Mareva not as a nuclear weapon, but as an iron dome. It is there to ensure access to justice, while the law proceeds in its otherwise leisurely way.

Thank you so very much for inviting this reminiscence. I will leave the metaverse for others.