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jurisdiction, without regard for the trading interest of other countries. att g, for information, a Press Notice which we put out when the Secretary of State for Trade introduced the Bill into the House of Commons. This gives some background to the legislation and also summarizes contents of the Bill's clauses. It may however be helpful if I highlight certain aspects of the Bill.
Clause 1
The
This allows the Secretary of State to prohibit compliance with foreign measures which are or would be damaging to the trading interests of the United Kingdom. This clause is basically a revision of Section 1 of the 1964 Act but instead of applying just to shipping it extends to all trading measures. The 1964 Act only allowed the Secretary of State to prohibit compliance with a measure which infringed the jurisdiction of the UK. This jurisdictional test has been removed from the new Bill.
Clause 2
This strengthens Section 2 of the 1964 Act which allowed the Secretary of State to prohibit compliance with a request from a foreign Court, tribunal or authority for the production of commercial documents or information in the UK. For the 1964 Act to be used, two tests had to be applied; the documents had to be in the UK and their requirement by tests had to be applied; the documents had to be in the UK and their requirement by an overseas authority had to infringe the jurisdiction of the UK in some way.
Under the new Bill, the territorial test (i.e that the documents are in the UK) will usually be enough to allow the Secretary of State to block their production. This clause therefore provides extra protection for all UK companies facing litigation or investigation by a foreign Court.
Clause 5
This clause breaks new ground and has no forerunner in the 1964 Act. It provides that judgements for multiple damages given in civil proceedings by Courts of overseas countries (usually US treble damage judgements) shall not be enforceable in the UK, We believe this to be purely declaratory and reflects the current common law position. The clause further provides that judgements given in overseas countries based on competition laws which have been specified by an order made by the Secretary of State shall not be enforceable in the UK. The Secretary of State would clearly only specify overseas legislation which was clearly at odds with our own, for example, judgements under the US shipping legislation where the US have consistently tried to impose on our companies regulatory solutions which we do not support.
Clause 6
This clause also breaks new ground. It would enable UK citizens, corporations in the UK or in a territory outside the UK for whose international relations HMG is responsible and other persons carrying on business in the UK to recover sums paid under foreign judgements for multiple damages in excess of the compensation for the loss of the person or company in whose favour the judgement was given. For this clause f operate, the person or company who received the judgement in its favour would clearly need to have assets in the UK. This clause is primarily aimed at the US legal practice of awarding treble damages in antitrust cases. We consider such damages to be penal and that UK companies need protection against this sort of activity.
Given that the protection in the new Bill is considerably greater than that in the 1964 Act, I would think that Hong Kong would want to exercie the option under Section 7(6) of the new Bill to extend the legislation to itself. Hong Kong certainly
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