Lisbon hosted this year’s COMBAR North American meeting, the annual conference organised by COMBAR to promote an understanding of current issues in transatlantic commercial legal work.

After a cocktail reception on Thursday, Friday was taken up with panel sessions which dealt with a range of hot topics: hedge fund litigation; ancillary remedies in support of foreign proceedings; injunctive support for arbitrations; and jurisdictional issues in credit-crunch cases. For each session, a panel of leading practitioners was assembled whose composition reflected the multi-jurisdictional aspects of the attendees and of the questions involved. As well as English, Canadian and US lawyers, there were contributions by practitioners from the BVI, the Channel Islands, and Switzerland.

Friday morning session papers by: Charles Béar QC Jeffrey Leon Nic Journeaux
Friday afternoon session papers by: Jeffrey Gruder QC Tim Lord QC John F Baughman F Paul Morrison

See the meeting programme for all the sessions and speakers that took part in the 2 day meeting.

The Hon Mr Justice David Steel gave a very well received address during the short adjournment between the Friday panel sessions. Conscious that an after-dinner joke, once recorded, can never be deployed again, I will restrain myself in reporting only that the learned judge described the art of advocacy as the process of laying artificial pearls before real swine. The extent to which the room was held by the address can be gauged by the response of the serving staff, who refrained from distributing the puddings until it had ended. The first panel session of the afternoon was accordingly accompanied by chocolate brownies, which was no bad thing.

After the final Friday session, a drinks reception was held in Lisbon’s Water Museum. The building formed part of the aqueduct system which was built in 1746. Remarkably, it survived intact during the 1755 earthquake and has now become a museum and exhibition space dedicated to the city’s eighteenth-century water supply. The conference attendees found plenty to slake their thirst.

Saturday morning involved a moot in which Charles Béar QC was called as an entertainingly difficult expert witness on the law of Combaria. Texan Steve Susman’s laconic cross-examination put the evasive ‘expert’ through his paces, although I wonder how often his ingenious ‘loose hearing aid’ attack would need to be deployed against even the most awkward real-life crook in the box.

The final drinks reception of the meeting was held before dinner at the former royal palace at Sintra, after which Michael Brindle QC gave a speech which touched on the many similarities and the few distinctions between lawyers practising on each side of the Atlantic. The Atlantic made its presence known at Sintra: high on the hills above Lisbon, the palace complex sat under an ominous-looking cloud which was a pleasant change to the heat of the city. The cloud is, apparently, a feature of the peculiar local micro-climate which drew the Portuguese royal family to the spot in the early sixteenth century and is affectionately known as the ‘queen’s fart’.

As with the Ryder Cup, the meeting alternates between North American and European locations; venues being discussed for next year include Canada, the Caribbean and Miami. A particular effort was made this year to encourage junior members to attend the meeting, and there were a significant number of attendees for whom the meeting was their first; if next year’s meeting can be combined with a week on a sunny Caribbean beach, it is not hard to imagine the trend continuing. Wherever the meeting takes place, it is likely to involve the same blend of incisive commentary, engaging debate, and an entertaining social programme.

Thanks must go to everyone involved in the organisation of the event, including Chairman of the North American committee Joe Smouha QC, and particularly Veronica Kendall.

Matthew Parfitt
Erskine Chambers

CPD Accreditation
The Bar Standards Board accredited the meeting with 8.5 CPD hours.