Case Nos: CA-2024-002667 and CA-2025-000223 - [2025] EWCA Civ 951

Conclusion on Grounds 1 and 2

That is sufficient to resolve the first two grounds of Mr Vesnin’s appeal against the Morgan Judgment. There is rightly no separate appeal against the judge’s exercise of discretion. The judge reached a conclusion in the exercise of his discretion on the facts with which I would agree, and which in any event was well within the reasonable ambit of that discretion. In my view he was quite right to have regard both to the very wide range of issues to which Mr Vesnin’s intervention has given rise and the likely timescale within which those issues might be resolved (even assuming that they were all justiciable by the English Court).

Against that background, the judge was also, in my view, right to place significant weight on the fact that maintenance of the Undertaking in effect gave Mr Vesnin the benefits of an injunction preventing Q&M as the registered holders of shares in Eurasia from dealing with them, without having to provide a cross-undertaking in damages. That is particularly so in circumstances in which it does not appear that the Moscow Court Ruling upon which Mr Vesnin relies actually decides that the shares in Eurasia belong either to Mr Ananiev or Mrs Ananieva, and Mr Vesnin had taken no steps to apply for enforcement of that ruling in Cyprus.

Procedural fairness

I would also reject the appeal on the third (procedural unfairness) ground. This was (rightly) not strongly advanced in argument by Mr Davies KC.

Since there was no issue estoppel arising out of the Johnson Judgment, any late notification of that judgment to Mr Vesnin cannot have caused him any prejudice.

Moreover, I also do not consider that any of the documents said to have been seen only belatedly by Mr Vesnin or his legal team after the end of the argument before Mr James Morgan KC, could have had any material relevance or bearing upon the meaning and effect of the Tomlin Order. At most they potentially reinforced the complexities of the matter, which makes it even less likely that the mechanism provided in the Schedule to the Tomlin Order could have been intended to bind the hands of the Court as regards the process that should take place before release of the Undertaking.