BL-2025-001269 and BL-2024-001337 - [2025] EWHC 2706 (Ch)

This is my judgment in two applications each of which is essentially the counterpart of the other. The applications flow from an order of mine dated 22nd November 2024 and from the preceding judgment of which the neutral citation number is [2024] EWHC 2999 (Ch). In that judgment I granted declarations as to the status of Mr Protopapas, a receiver appointed over Cape Intermediate Holdings Ltd (“CIHL”) in the courts of South Carolina. Essentially, I declared that in the circumstances, and under English law in relation to an English company, he had no authority to act for or bind CIHL, and I made injunctions preventing from so acting - the terms of that injunction appear below.

The underlying facts and reasoning for that order appear in my judgment, and this judgment presupposes that the reader has read it. The urgency with which this judgment is required means that I do not have time to set out again the acts of the receiver which led up to my earlier judgment, and for the same reason this judgment is shorter than it otherwise would have been. I record that I have taken into account all the arguments advanced by the parties before me, whether recorded or dealt with in this judgment or not.

Mr Protopapas is pursuing a large number of people and corporations in the third party proceedings described in my earlier judgment, seeking, as receiver, contribution towards what he says is a liability for asbestos-related injuries. He purports to do so as court-appointed receiver over CIHL. One of those groups of defendants is a group of companies including companies with the well-known name of De Beers. I will call that group the De Beers defendants, or just De Beers. That group has decided it wishes to settle with Mr Protopapas. The applications before me raise the question of whether they should be restrained from doing so (CIHL’s application) and whether I should vary the terms of the injunction to ensure that they are not complicit in a breach if they do (De Beers’s application).

These applications came on on very short notice for reasons which will appear. Essentially there is a scheduled trial in South Carolina on Monday 20th October (ie the date of this judgment - these applications were heard by me on Friday 17th October). A settlement agreement would avoid the trial, and an answer is needed by the time the trial is scheduled to start at 9.30 local time. They raise quite complex issues. Nonetheless, the able submissions Mr Derek Dale KC for CIHL and Mr David Joseph KC for De Beers meant that argument was completed within a day (as it had to be).