PI Brief Update

Private International Law and PI: Final Gasps of the 1995 Act? - Matthew Chapman, 1 Chancery Lane

09/06/14. As we move further and further away from 11 January 2009 (the date of application of the Rome II Regulation (EC No 864/2007) which governs applicable law in tort: see, Homawoo v GMF Assurances SA [2012] Case C-412/10) we see less and less of Part III of the Private International Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1995 (the domestic statute which used to govern these matters before the European Union piled in with Rome II). Those of us old enough to have dutifully ploughed through the 1995 Act provisions, cases like Roerig v Valiant Trawlers Ltd, Harding v Wealands and the pages of Dicey, Morris & Collins lovingly devoted to all this stuff, might have thought that cases like Middleton v Allianz IARD SA [2012] EWHC 2287 (QB) represented the final application of the 1995 Act (ss 11 and 12) for the determination of applicable law. However, the last couple of months have seen the publication of not one, but two important QB judgments in the personal injury field in which the English Court has again grappled with the question (per s 12 of the 1995 Act) whether it is “substantially more appropriate” to apply to the tort the law of a country other than that of the place where...

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