Spain had an ace up its sleeve. After several troubles in the British Justice to execute the judgment of the Supreme Court on the Prestige and manage to enter the 855 million euros of the insurance, the legal representatives of the Kingdom of Spain, coordinated by the State Attorney, have achieved a breakthrough in the Supreme Court of England and Wales.
This court has raised before the European Union a preliminary ruling on the conflict of jurisdictions underlying the claim, so that the insurer, the London P&I Club, pay the 1,000 million dollars to which it was convicted as direct civil liability. In other words, Spain has succeeded, even after the Brexi, that the highest community judicial body acts as arbitrator in a situation where everything indicated that the British jurisdiction was going to be more receptive to the interests of the mutual maritime company, which in the last eight years had tried to shield itself in court against an execution of the sentence that they already see coming.
The State Attorney has informed the First Section of the Provincial Court of A Corua, in charge of the execution of the sentence, of the new judicial scenario that opens with this decision and that allows to dissipate the procedural pessimism regarding the possibility that the oil slick damage was justly repaired, nearly 19 years after the tanker accident.
The voice of Galicia
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The brief explains that the procedure to execute the sentence in the British jurisdiction began in March 2019 -before Brexi– under the protection of the Community judicial cooperation regulation, which will continue to be in force despite the recent departure of the United Kingdom from the EU. In this context, they explain, the London P&I Club, the mutual that signed the policy, opposes the execution of the sentence on the basis of an alleged irreconcilability of resolutions and an alleged violation of human rights in the development of criminal proceedings in Spain, in reference to the criminal treatment received by the captain of the Prestige, Apostolos Mangouras, among other factors aimed at delegitimizing the process.
There can be no revision
Faced with this strategy, the legal representatives of the Kingdom of Spain – the prestigious law firm Squire Patton Boggs – argued that the English court cannot extend itself in reviewing the content of the Spanish judicial decision, because this implies an inadmissible interference in the exercise of the jurisdictional function by the Spanish courts and, by extension, in the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Spain, and sows the most absolute mistrust in the way of proceeding of the English courts, explains the State Attorney in the letter sent to the Corsican Court.
The British court, in light of these allegations by Spain, decided to refer this question for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice of the EU. On the website of the community judicial body it appears that the case was registered on December 22, but it has not advanced since then. It is hardly explained that the applicable international regulation is the 1958 New York Convention, that regulates the execution of national sentences in foreign jurisdictions.
The State Attorney General, Consuelo Castro Rey, from Galicia, explained in a recent interview for La Voz that her main objective was for the British courts to raise this prejudicial question. There are a number of previous pronouncements by the British courts – he explained – that we understand to be contrary to the right to enforce sentences of one country in another EU country. And that can only be decided by the European Court of Justice.
The State Attorney’s letter also explains that the Prestige insurer reacted with new lawsuits against the Kingdom of Spain. On the one hand, a claim for damages for the alleged breach of an arbitration award and a British judgment that sought to avoid the execution of the Spanish judgment. And, on the other, a procedure to appoint an arbitrator. Both were appealed.
pablo gonzlez
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TOBY MELVILLE
A judge gives the reason to the insurer so that it is an arbitrator who decides. The decision harms Spanish interests, but the complex judicial process continues
The judicial maze of lawsuits and counterclaims that is being developed in London to enforce the Prestige ruling of the Supreme Court, which obliges the tanker’s insurer to pay 855 million euros, has taken a course that goes against Spanish interests and of the legitimate desire to achieve compensation for the ecological disaster. Although the trial of the main lawsuit will be held in December, an order by Judge Andrew Henshaw, also from the commercial chamber of the Supreme Court of England and Wales, returns the disputes to 2013, when the British Justice decided that any claim from Spain and France In this regard it must be developed under the terms of the coveted $ 1 billion policy. That is, it must be settled by means of an extrajudicial arbitration, leaving in the background that there is a final ruling from a community court such as the Spanish Supreme Court. It must be remembered that, despite the Brexi, the Brussels cooperation rules will still be in force, as the order for the enforcement of the judgment in the British jurisdiction was registered on time, in May 2019.
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