In September 2024, the
English Supreme Court made a landmark ruling on anti-suit injunctions in
UniCredit Bank GmbH v. RusChemAlliance (RCA) LLC [2024] EWCA Civ 64. This
decision followed two earlier prominent judgments: Deutsche Bank v. RCA [2023]
EWCA Civ 114 and Commerzbank v. RCA [2023] EWHC 2510 (Comm). This article
explores this recent case law trilogy on anti-suit injunctions through two
competing lenses: first, party autonomy; and second, comity and the need to
respect state sovereignty. The purpose of this article is to shed light on the
remaining uncertainty pertaining to how these two interests materialize in
practice – particularly because of the repeated references to ‘caution’ in the
commentary on anti-suit injunctions. It will be argued that, although the
English case law reveals a pro-contractual enforcement and pro-arbitration
approach, uncertainty and inconsistency persist in two ways: (1) the
problematic application of Enka v. Chubb in determining the law governing the
arbitration agreement (AA); (2) the jurisprudence on comity.