RAWALPINDI: On Monday, the Lahore High Court’s (LHC) Rawalpindi bench declared that agreements pertaining to commerce and banking could not be contested in more than one venue.
When dismissing a private company’s appeal against First Habib Mudarba Ltd., LHC Justice Jawad Hassan found that financial matters for which the parties had agreed upon jurisdiction could not be heard in a different court.
Examining the agreements with exclusive clauses pertaining to the parties’ agreed-upon judicial jurisdiction is the crux of the issue.
The parties’ attorneys have cited a number of signed papers and agreements during their case presentation.
The bank’s attorney, Samia Faiz Durrani, stated that the plaintiffs filed this lawsuit before the LHC, which could be returned. According to Clause 12, the parties had agreed that Karachi courts would have exclusive territorial jurisdiction to decide any dispute or claim arising out of the agreement.
Muhammad Imran Malik, the plaintiffs’ attorney, maintained that the LHC is the proper forum to address the dispute by citing sanction letters that were executed at Rawalpindi on various dates.
All commercial and financial contracts and agreements have multiple “boilerplate clauses,” which are commonly viewed as normal add-ons to the basic terms and conditions of the deal. Justice Hassan stated that this is now a settled and recognized law in the nation.
Standard contractual terms known as “boilerplate clauses” are frequently found in many contracts.
One such “boilerplate clause,” according to the LHC order, deals with choice of law and jurisdiction. While these can be fairly simple when both parties are based in the same jurisdiction, they should be given careful thought, especially when the parties to the contract are not.
