I succesfully sued William Hill PLC for a case against their casino in Gibralter. William Hill argued that it was the wrong court and company but the judge ruled his court as a Forum of Convenience. When he did that, we adjourned and Hills agreed to pay plus costs and damages.
VERY interesting. Can this case be traced easily through court records, since the judgement that the case COULD be heard by a UK court would set a precedent in "case law", and could be used to counter any argument Betfair puts forward about it being "wrong court, wrong company".
Note how the minute they realised the case COULD be decided in a court of the CUSTOMER'S choosing, they simply "caved in" and paid a settlement + costs, rather than take the risk of having a judgement against them on their record.
The judge probably decided that the company & jurisdictional structure was "artificial", and designed to make it hard for customers to seek justice through the courts. It will probably work this way with ANY company that is legally based in the UK (Betfair for example), but ring fences some activities in an offshore subsidiary.
The UK courts tend to "clarify" some legal arguments through "case law", rather than written law. This requires a case to be brought for the first time over a given matter for a precedent setting ruling to be given. Once accepted, such a ruling can be quoted by the lawyers in future cases as a supporting argument for their case, and judges WILL take prior rulings into account before making their own.
Even the UK GOVERNMENT have lost high profile court cases because of this principle, and not only do the government have the best access of all to top lawyers, they MAKE the laws in the first place!
Remember, you are suing the COMPANY, not it's "server farm". It may ONLY be the servers that have a physical presence in Malta, along with a simple maildrop office. If this is all Betfair have in Malta, they will have a hard time arguing that their activities are conducted under Maltese law.
There is also a European proposal that allows CONSUMERS to sue any EU country in the CUSTOMER'S own country, rather than the EU state the company is based in. This was thought up because it was thought that companies already have an unfair advantage over customers in legal proceedings because they can hire expensive lawyers, and try to price the customer out of the process, even where the customer can sue "at home". I do not know whether this proposal became EU law, or whether particular countries signed up to it. I spotted it looking for something else, and it is one of those rather obscure EU rules that tend to stay hidden, perhaps in this case because companies would rather customers DON'T know about it.
We now need a UK based player with enough at stake, but ONLY as much as can be handled through the "small claims" process. They first want a ruling that the case CAN be decided by a UK court, and they may then find this is also the LAST ruling they will be needing
