Francis Kendall considers the impact of the falling pound on costs awards to European litigants
- Successful overseas parties may well try their arm in UK courts as Brexit uncertainty continues.
Here’s something that voters somehow overlooked when casting their ballots in the EU referendum last year: the impact the subsequently falling pound would have on costs awards to European litigants.
It’s impossible to say whether this could have tipped the balance in favour of remain, and it is equally difficult to predict what the courts are going to do about it.
This novel issue has come up twice in the High Court in the last couple of months, and unhelpfully the judges have gone in different directions.
Elkamet
In Elkamet Kunststofftechnik GmbH v Saint-Gobain Glass France S.A. [2016] EWHC 3421 (Pat)—involving a successful German claimant—the court was asked to make an additional costs order due to the decline in the exchange rate between the pound and the euro since the
