How is it possible to enforce a judgment from the courts of one state against the government of another? That’s the topic I discuss on this week’s episode of A Lawyer Talks. My guest is Jehad Mustafa, a partner at Farrer & Co who specialises in state immunity, and we spoke at the solicitors’ historic (and partly stone-floored) offices in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
He and I discussed two rulings delivered last month:
In Ghanem Al-Masarir v Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the High Court awarded more than £3 million in damages to a UK-resident critic of Saudi Arabia who claimed the Saudis had hacked his phone and sent people to beat him up in the street.
In COL v The United Arab Emirates, the High Court awarded more than £145,000 to a woman from the Philippines who was found to have been the victim of modern slavery after she had worked as a domestic servant for a UAE diplomat in London.
Another case mentioned in our discussion was Federal Republic of Nigeria v Ogbonna, decided by the president of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in 2011 (though reported in 2012).
What are the chances of individual claimants being able to recover even a penny of the compensation they were awarded against foreign states? The answer is more encouraging than I had thought.
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