It has been an interesting year for international cartel enforcement. Leaving to one side the entry into force on 20 June of the criminalisation and other key enforcement provisions of the UK Enterprise Act 2002, there have been a number of UK and US court decisions with potentially significant effects on the incidence of private litigation and which could potentially have an impact on the incidence of forum shopping in cartel litigation, for both the US and the European Union (EU).
These decisions have the common thread of reducing procedural hurdles and permitting non-domiciled claimants to bring private actions for damages as regards injury suffered outside the jurisdiction. The most recent is the ruling of the English High Court in Provimi Ltd v Roche Products Ltd et al [2003] QBD, which is expected to make the English courts the preferred European forum for damages actions arising from international cartels. The Provimi decision followed hot on the heels of two recent US circuit court rulings (Empagran S. v F Hoffman-LaRoche Ltd 315 F3d 338 (DC Cir 2003) and Kruman v Christies’ International, 284 F3d 384 (2d Cir 2002), which have opened up the prospect of foreign claimants with loss suffered outside the US bringing treble damages actions under US law.
