Anti-Suit Injunction Against Foreign Divorce Proceedings

Divorce is already an exhaustive process. But a parallel adjudication of parties’ matrimonial disputes in Courts simultaneously in India and abroad makes it more complex, not just for best divorce lawyer bangalore  the husband and wife but for the courts too. This can create conflict among authorities of courts. Here comes the significance of an anti-suit injunction against foreign divorce proceedings. An anti-suit injunction order restrains a party from commencing or continuing a suit in a court.

What Is Meant By Anti-Suit Injunction?
Anti-suit injunction is a species of the injunction. An anti-suit injunction is a court order that prevents one of the parties to a lawsuit from pursuing its remedies in a foreign court. As an example, two entities, one in the United States and the other in India, are at odds.

One entity seeks redress in a forum in the United States that is neither natural nor convenient, and where the opposing party is not subject to its jurisdiction. The opposing party can simply approach the local courts and declare that all conflicts should be resolved by a single court, and can thus obtain an injunction to prevent the other party from pursuing remedies in a foreign jurisdiction.

The Apex Court in a recent Order in Madhavendra L.Bhatnagar v. BhavnaLall, [(2021) 2 SCC 775], held that an anti-suit injunction can be issued if the other party had already resorted to proceedings before another court including outside India.

What Is An Anti-Suit Relief?
An anti-anti-suit injunction is basically an injunction barring a court from continuing with a proceeding in the manner of an anti-suit injunction that is underway and/or where orders of anti-suit injunction have been issued.

The first such case in which an anti-anti-suit injunction was issued included disagreements between Lenovo and Motorola/IPCom over the enforcement of Fair Reasonable and Non Discriminatory (FRAND) requirements for the award of mobile patents. In this case, the US courts awarded Lenovo an anti-suit injunction, but the French courts granted Motorola/IPCom an anti-anti-suit injunction, stopping the US courts from moving further. Similar anti-anti-suit injunctions were issued by German and English courts.

Despite the fact that the legislation governing anti-anti-suit injunctions in India is still in its infancy, they have been issued by the Delhi High Court and the Calcutta High Court.

Anti-Suit Injunction In Matrimonial Disputes:
Shri Anil Malhotra and Ranjit Malhotra in the ‘Global Indians and The Law’ published by OakBridge referred to anti- suit injunction in Chapter 23 as follows:

“In this backdrop, this new dimension of matrimonial litigation is coming into practice in the arena in the shape of anti-suit injunctions. They are the remedy against filing of suits in different jurisdictions, in respect of the same cause of action. A petition preferred in India, for restraining an opposing spouse from pursuing or continuing with a complaint for matrimonial relief in a foreign Court, would be such an anti-suit injunction petition in matrimonial matters. Lack of jurisdiction, both regarding the corpus of the Hindu marriage, and the physical presence of an Indian spouse in the territory abroad, is the main ground of such Suits in India. However, even the reverse application now finds popular practice, making anti-suit injunctions a two-way street.”

The power of the Family Court to award injunctions in marriage disputes makes an anti-suit injunction viable. This authority may be traced back to Explanation (d) to Section 7(1) of the Family Courts Act. However, the Family Court must use extreme caution in granting the remedy.