Court of Appeal backs case management decision in contempt proceedings (Ablyazov v JSC BTA Bank)

Table of contents

• Court details
• Facts
• Ground I
• The authorities
• Case management decision for the judge
• Public interest
• Judge had exercised his case management discretion impeccably
• Ground II - the overlap
• Comment

Article summary

The Court of Appeal has held that the case management decision of the judge in the Commercial court was sound in (a) limiting the number of allegations of contempt to three and allowing the other 32 to remain extant (thus confirming there is no rule forcing a party alleging contempt to proceed with or abandon all allegations) and (b) allowing the allegations of contempt to be heard before the trials of the substantive proceedings, where two of the allegations overlapped with issues in the substantive proceedings. Where there was a freezing order, it was of paramount importance for the court to do and to be seen to be doing all it could to ensure the efficacy of the freezing order.