December 01, 2018
Corporate Litigation Alert - November 2018
In a recent judgment, the Hon’ble Delhi High Court holds that mere issuance of Bank Guarantee from Delhi does not confer jurisdiction to courts in Delhi, while dismissing a suit by Affinity Beauty Salon Pvt. Ltd. seeking injunction against Kotak Mahindra Bank (Defendant no. 1) and Wella India Pvt. Ltd. (Defendant no. 2) from encashing the Bank Guarantees (BGs) furnished by Affinity to Wella India. The judgment has key takeaways on relevance of jurisdiction clause in main contract even in cases pertaining to invocation of Bank Guarantees.
In the present case, the main contract, pursuant to which the BGs were issued, contained a clause conferring exclusive jurisdiction to the Courts in Mumbai. However, there was no specific jurisdiction clause in the BGs. A preliminary objection on lack of territorial jurisdiction of the Delhi High Court was raised by Wella India on the ground of exclusive jurisdiction being vested with Courts in Mumbai in terms of the main contract.
Vaish Associates Advocates through a team consisting of Mr. Gaurav Varma, Principal Associate and Mr. Kaustubh Prakash, Associate represented Wella India (Defendant No.2) before Delhi High Court.
The judgment can be accessed at the official website of the Delhi High Court through this link- https://bit.ly/2QsdS8E
For any details and clarifications, please feel free to write to Mr. Satwinder Singh at [email protected]
