John Fordham explains how devastating freezing injunctions can be
The world of litigation was, for a short period, in grave danger. Its most powerful weapon, the worldwide freezing (Mareva) injunction, had fallen into the wrong hands.
To English litigation lawyers, a worldwide freezing injunction is known as the nuclear weapon in the litigation armoury. Only English and a few like-minded courts have the jurisdiction to grant these very powerful orders. Courts on the continent of Europe do not, neither do courts in the US.
The weapon was first fashioned by one of the greatest English judges of the second half of the last century, Lord Denning. One of his relevant decisions concerned a ship called the Mareva which gave its name to Lord Denning's piece of litigation hardware. Commonwealth countries and others followed suit. Subsequently, it was given a statutory basis. Most recently, and regrettably, there has been an attempt to abolish the Mareva name in favour of the allegedly more plain English “freezing injunction”. But, Mareva has stuck (see The Mareva [1980]
