Howard Colman was recently retained to advise a European law firm on an interesting and unusual dispute.
The client of the law firm is a national state bank which had minted a large number of coins for an African national bank.
Although the African bank had paid for the cost of producing the coins, they had not collected them. This left the producing bank having to store them for quite some time. As the amount of coins involved amounted to several hundred million, the cost of storing these was substantial.
The parties contract had been made subject to English law but unfortunately they had not foreseen this difficulty and so there was no provision within the contract to deal with these circumstances.
Howard was asked to advise the law firm as to their client’s rights and duties in this regard which involved a consideration of English laws of bailment and related legal issues.
Having provided the advice to the law firm, we understand that they commenced an action on behalf of their client which has led to the African bank paying the outstanding money for the storage, and we are pleased to learn that the parties are now in the process of meeting to discuss further cooperation between them.
Whilst we are willing and able to litigate matters if necessary, it is invariably a better outcome for all concerned if a sensible compromise can be achieved.
If you require expert legal support in resolving or managing international issues, please get in touch with Howard Colman and his team.
