CL-2015-000047 - [2025] EWHC 2724 (Comm)

INTRODUCTION

This judgment relates to an application by the Claimants to strike out certain allegations of dishonesty made by the active Defendants in an Inquiry into damages, and applications by the Defendants for permission to amend their statements of case in the Inquiry.

Following a ten-week trial, I handed down judgment on 22 January 2025, dismissing the Claimants’ claims that the Defendants had committed a substantial and sustained fraud in connection with 144 crude oil purchase and sale transactions between April 2007 and May 2013 relating to oil originating in West Africa (Alta Trading UK (formerly known as Arcadia Petroleum Limited) v Bosworth [2025] EWHC 91 (Comm) (“the 22 January judgment”)). In the same judgment I upheld certain counterclaims made by the First Defendant (“D1”) and the Second Defendant (“D2”).

At the hearing of consequential matters on 10 February 2025, I made an order directing that the Claimants’ undertakings in damages, in connection with a worldwide freezing order which had been in place since February 2015, be enforced and that there be an Inquiry into damages (“the Inquiry”), to be heard at a 2-week trial not before March 2026. Damages are sought by D1, D2 and the Fifth Defendant (“D5”). For convenience I shall from now on refer to those three parties as “the Defendants”.

The Claimants applied to strike out allegations made by the Defendants, in D1/D2’s Particulars of Loss and Damage in the Inquiry (“D1/2Particulars”) and in D5’s Inquiry Points of Claim (“D5 Points of Claim”), that the Claimants had obtained and maintained the worldwide freezing order dishonestly. Following a hearing on 27 June 2025, I handed down judgment on 18 July 2025 ([2025] EWHC 1837 (Comm)) (“the 18 July judgment”) concluding that the dishonesty allegations may at least be relevant to certain matters concerning causation which the Defendants sought to advance, and that the strike-out application must be adjourned in order to give the Defendants an opportunity properly to plead those matters and the Claimants an opportunity to respond to them.

The Defendants then served draft Amended Replies to the Claimants’ Defences to the Defendants’ claims in the Inquiry. The Claimants opposed the applications for permission to amend and maintained their application to strike-out. The applications were then the subject of further written and oral submissions at a hearing on 7 October 2025. I also heard applications by the Defendants for Further Information in relation to matters relevant to the dishonestly allegations if allowed to remain.

The outcome of the amendment and strike-out applications has a bearing on the scope of the parties’ disclosure and witness evidence in the Inquiry, and a case management conference is listed for 24 October 2025. It has therefore been necessary to produce this judgment in fairly short order, in order not to delay the smooth progress of the Inquiry.

For the reasons given below, I have concluded that the Defendants’ applications to amend should, in the main, be allowed and the strike-out application dismissed. In addition, the Defendants’ applications for Further Information should be allowed in part, as detailed in section (F) below.