The value of legal cases coming before the DIFC Courts ballooned in the first half of the year as more and more businesses turned to Dubai’s English-language commercial court in an attempt to force their creditors to pay up.
Legal cases worth Dh3.44 billion were handled by DIFC Courts in the first six months of 2016, according to official figures released yesterday, 48 per cent more than the Dh2.33bn of cases handled during the same period a year earlier.
DIFC said that the biggest increase in its workload came from a huge growth in the number of enforcement cases in which DIFC judges can force parties to pay up once an award has been made against them.
Enforcement cases, which are only heard once a legal judgment has been given, discuss the practicalities of getting the money awarded by the courts to the victors by looking in detail at the defendants’ assets and trying to find the most effective way of getting at the money. Enforcement decisions made in DIFC Courts can then be enforced throughout the rest of the UAE.
According to the DIFC, the total number of enforcement cases it handled during the first six months of 2016 grew to 50 from just 17 heard a year earlier – an increase of 194 per cent.
By comparison, the total number of legal cases coming before the DIFC Court of First Instance and arbitration cases grew by 35 per cent during the period, from 17 to 23.
DIFC said that the average value of the claims filed in enforcement cases grew fourfold during the period, from Dh6 million in the first half of 2015 to Dh31m this year.
Meanwhile, the average claim value of CFI and arbitration-related cases fell from Dh132m to Dh82m.
lbarnard@thenational.ae
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