Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Prestige: UK Supreme Court refusal cements English public policy primacy of arbitral award over Brussels I enforcement; pay‑to‑be‑paid and state immunity waiver reaffirmed

Published on: 20 June 2025

Published by a Law360 reporter

Legal News

Article summary

On 2 May 2025, the Supreme Court of the UK declined permission to appeal in The Kingdom of Spain v The London Steam-Ship Owners' Mutual Insurance Association Ltd [2025] UKSC 24

This procedural closure ended the Spanish state’s decades‑long effort to enforce an €855m judgment of its own highest court against the London Steam‑Ship Owners’ Mutual Insurance Association Ltd, insurer of the ill‑fated M/T Prestige. Framed by one of Europe’s worst environmental disasters — a vast oil spill off the Galician coast — and a maze of cross‑border legal regimes, the dispute laid bare the increasingly intricate interplay between arbitral sovereignty, foreign state immunity, and the evolving landscape of post‑Brexit private international law.

Across more than twenty years, the litigation became a touchstone for wider tensions: civil law traditions permitting direct tort actions against insurers versus common law’s emphasis on contractual terms and the primacy of arbitral mechanisms; EU supranational authority versus English judicial autonomy; and, most sharply, sovereign enforcement ambitions versus the finality prized in private commerce. The case also highlighted the consequences of the UK’s post‑Brexit disentanglement from the Brussels I Regulation...

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