Recent Legal Trends In Dispute Resolution In The Cayman Islands

Q: What are the main types of litigation that you have been seeing in the Cayman Islands this year?

A: In previous years we saw a few particular areas of major interest emerge, but the past year has been a year of wide variety. This has been one of our busiest years for dispute resolution and we and other Cayman lawyers have been involved in a broad range of large, complex contentious cases, including commercial litigation, restructuring and insolvency, trusts, regulatory fields, professional negligence cases (both for plaintiff and defendant), proceeds of crime cases (for institution and for customer) and other contentious disputes. We are also seeing the continuation of disputed valuation cases in connection with the squeeze-out of minority shareholders of Cayman companies - usually to facilitate a company's subsequent public offering.

Q: What sorts of trust-related litigation are you seeing most often?

A: Notably, Ogier has been involved in more and more interesting Beddoe applications [named after the case of In re Beddoe, Downes v Cottam [1893] 1 Ch 547 (CA)] over the past year. As you may know, these are applications by trustees for directions from a court when a trust has become involved in litigation or other proceedings. Each case comes with its own varied fact pattern but in a typical case a Cayman trust has somehow become involved in over-seas proceedings and its trustee asks a Cayman court for directions about how to proceed. If the trustee subsequently acts in accordance with the court's direction, it will be protected in respect of its legal costs because the order usually acts as a ruling to the effect that the trustee is entitled to be indemnified for such costs from the assets in the trust.

In addition to the spike in Beddoe applications we are also working on a number of significant restructurings of the substantial trust structures of ultra-high net worth clients. Because the assets that they hold in these structures (which includes trading businesses across the globe) are so complex, we have to take great to ensure that they avoid unintended adverse consequences. Some restructurings have also necessitated an application to a court to give its blessing to a 'momentous' decision that the trustee wants to take as part of the restructuring or perhaps to resolve any uncertainty about his/its entitlement to pursue a particular course of action.

Finally, this year we have seen a rise in demand for lawyers to give expert...