The Commercial Court is a specialist division of the High Court in England and Wales which is noted for having high quality specialist Judges and sophisticated procedures for dealing with substantial and complex commercial disputes.
It has been at the forefront of many of the recent developments in the way in which litigation is handled in the UK and, quite recently, moved to its own court building in central London.
A recent survey of the Court’s published rulings over a 12 month period has found that three-quarters of the parties involved in the litigation in the Commercial Court were from outside the UK, with a substantial number of cases having no UK based parties.
European litigants accounted for around 25% of the parties, Middle Eastern and African parties account for around 11% whilst Russian and Eurasian litigants made up a little over 11%.
The survey discovered that the litigants came from a total of 66 different countries.
The Commercial Court is growing in popularity as it is generally seen as a safe and neutral forum and English law has a significant number of powerful tools, not always available in other jurisdictions, to assist litigants such as freezing injunctions and search orders.
The Judiciary is widely recognised as being of high calibre and independent and unlike, for example, the US, civil cases are dealt with and decided by these highly qualified and experienced Judges and not by a jury.
Litigation in the Commercial Court is not a cheap option but for commercial clients with substantial disputes London remains an attractive and reliable forum for their resolution.
The Court also strongly encourages parties to consider resolving their disputes through Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) processes. There are a variety of options available for ADR one of which, mediation, is continuing to grow in popularity and deliver impressive results.
Unlike many jurisdictions where, once a case has started in Court, it almost inevitably ends up with a decision, in the UK, under 5% of cases issued in Court end up at a Trial. The remainder being settled by the parties through ADR or by agreement.
In particular, the Commercial Court Judges take a proactive approach to encouraging parties to explore these options and it is now increasingly rare for a case to reach trial without the parties having at least attempted ADR at some stage in the process.
