- The practical implications of recent case law on freezing orders.
Lord Justice Donaldson memorably described freezing orders as one of the law’s ‘nuclear‘ weapons in Bank Mellat v Nikpour [1985] FSR 87. It follows that access to such a weapon in the court’s arsenal is strictly policed, subject to a number of checks and balances that govern the licensing of its use. A run of recent cases has developed the jurisprudence in this area, the practical implications of which are considered in this two-part article.
Distinguishing the relief sought
In the first instance, it is important to distinguish general freezing orders from:
(1) orders sought to preserve the subject matter of a claim where the applicant has a proprietary or tracing claim (proprietary injunctions); and
(2) notification orders.
Although each represents a form of a freezing order, the conditions governing access to and deployment of the three forms of relief will vary.
For a proprietary injunction:
- It attaches only to assets which arguably
