The Supreme Court will hear the appeal of Servis-Terminal LLC v Drelle [2025] EWCA Civ 62 of this week and I will appear before the Court on behalf of the Trustee in Bankruptcy).
The Court of Appeal’s judgment in Drelle took centre stage as the BVI Commercial Court considered the case of JJW Hotels & Resorts Holding Inc v Rhodes & Anor BVIHC (COM) 2025/0296.
In JJW Hotels, the BVI Commercial Court considered the interrelationship between insolvency law and private international law: namely, whether a foreign judgment that remains unrecognised within the jurisdiction may properly found a statutory demand.
The Court aligned the BVI’s approach to unrecognised judgment with the approach taken by the Court of Appeal in Drelle. The Court accepted that the Privy Council case of Vendort Traders Inc v Evrostroy Grupp LLC [2016] UKPC 15 constituted the binding authority for the purposes of the case, but that was distinguishable.
The distinction identified by the Court was that the debt in Vendort arose from a contractual agreement, existing independently of the award, whereas foreign costs orders were the sole source of the alleged debt in JJW Hotels. As a result, in the latter, recognition was required as the debt was not “due and payable” as required by section 155 Insolvency Act 2003.
The BVI Commercial Court emphasised that the critical point was preventing parties from deploying insolvency proceedings as a means of circumventing the important safeguard of the right to challenge a foreign judgment’s recognition and enforcement.
Read the full judgment here.
Read my Drelle Case Digest here.
Read my Drelle article for TL4 here.
