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Santosh Associate v. Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation: Supreme Court refers the validity of arbitration pre-deposit clauses to a larger bench
Faced with a decade of apparently conflicting Supreme Court rulings on whether contractors alone can be made to pay a security deposit before arbitrating against a government body, a two-judge bench declined to resolve the conflict itself. It instead asked the Chief Justice of India to consider referring the question, and the binding status of the Court's own earlier ruling in S.K. Jain, to a larger bench.
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18 August 2026
Arbitration & Enforcement
LandOcean Hong Kong Investment Holding Group Ltd v West Indies Exploration Company Ltd: Federal Court enforces a London arbitration award as an Australian judgment
The Federal Court of Australia granted an ex parte application to convert a London seated LCIA arbitration award into a local judgment against two companies that had not paid a costs and damages award. The reasons work through, in careful practical detail, how the Court handles multi currency conversions and post judgment interest when a foreign award becomes an Australian judgment.
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18 August 2026
Civil Procedure & Limitation
Bliss Brands v Colgate-Palmolive: SCA finds contempt over cosmetic packaging tweaks and widens an advertising regulator's enforcement order
The Supreme Court of Appeal held that Bliss Brands remained in contempt of a court order requiring it to stop using packaging that too closely resembled a rival's, after two rounds of only cosmetic changes. On Colgate's cross-appeal, the Court also widened the enforcement order so it applies across every platform where the packaging appears, not only platforms belonging to the advertising regulator's own members.
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Balku Oram v. State of Odisha: Supreme Court affirms murder conviction built on a single eyewitness in a witch hunting killing
The Supreme Court dismissed an appeal against a life sentence for beating a woman to death after she was blamed for a child's death by witchcraft, upholding conviction on the uncorroborated testimony of her daughter, the sole eyewitness. The Court held that a close relative is not automatically an unreliable witness, and that an overnight delay in reporting the killing was properly explained.
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Pazhanathal v. Alamathal: A Will's Suspicious Circumstances Must Be Weighed Together, Not One at a Time
A family's forty year dispute over a widow's farmland turned on a single registered Will that named one branch of her late husband's descendants over the other two, and on whether that document had ever actually been proved as her genuine last wishes. The Supreme Court held that registration and years of quiet acceptance are not proof on their own, that a party trying to skip calling an attesting witness must first show that witness could genuinely not be found, and that circumstances casting doubt on a Will must be weighed together rather than explained away one at a time. Finding the Will unproved, it restored a decades old partition decree splitting the property among all three branches.
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Kashmir Ram v. State of Punjab: A Field Report and a Phone Call Were Enough to Satisfy This NDPS Safeguard
Two brothers were convicted of possessing 200 kilograms of poppy husk found in their vehicle, and appealed on the ground that the arresting officer never wrote down the secret tip he had acted on or sent it to his superior, a total failure the law treats as fatal to any resulting search. The Supreme Court of India held that a contemporaneous field report sent to the police station and a phone call summoning a senior officer to the scene, taken together, amounted to substantial compliance even without the specific written entry the statute describes, and rejected five further challenges to the conviction along the way. It dismissed the appeal and upheld the ten year sentence.
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16 August 2026
Intellectual Property
Gilead Sciences v. Meritain Health: Why a Chemically Identical Import Still Infringes a Drug's Trademark
A Maryland patient's HIV medication arrived from a Turkish pharmacy instead of his usual U.S. supplier, prompting Gilead to uncover a broader scheme in which health plan administrators steered patients toward imported, foreign-market versions of its drugs to cut costs. The Fourth Circuit held that even though the imported pills were chemically identical and genuinely made by Gilead, they were not genuine goods under trademark law because they differed materially in labeling and bypassed Gilead's quality control system, and it upheld findings that the health plan's administrators knew enough about the scheme to be liable too. The court affirmed a preliminary injunction blocking the entire importation operation.
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SEBI v. Rajeev Vasant Sheth: Why Needing the Money Is No Defence to Insider Trading
The promoters of a jewelry company sold off large blocks of shares while sitting on unpublished information about a catastrophic quarterly loss, and argued they did so only because the company risked being downgraded to a bad loan, not because they were trading on inside information. The Supreme Court held that under the 2015 insider trading regulations, unlike their 1992 predecessor, why someone trades while holding unpublished price sensitive information is simply irrelevant once the trade itself is established. It restored SEBI's finding of insider trading and the disgorgement order, upheld one set of penalties, and reduced only the other.
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Rahul v. State of Uttar Pradesh: When an Official Duty Record Ends a Dowry Death Case Before Trial
A husband facing dowry death charges over his wife's death by hanging sought to have the case quashed before trial, pointing to an unchallenged Border Security Force record placing him hundreds of kilometres away, a post-mortem showing no injuries beyond the ligature mark, and doors found locked from inside. The Supreme Court held that unimpeachable official evidence of this kind, especially read together with his co-accused parents' acquittal on the very same evidence at a full trial, could be weighed even at the pre-trial quashing stage rather than deferred entirely to trial. It quashed the proceedings against the husband alone, without disturbing his parents' acquittal or ruling on how the death actually occurred.
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13 August 2026
Matrimonial & Family
YEN v YEO: An Earlier Maintenance Order Does Not Bind a Guardianship Court Setting Support Afresh
A Singapore Family Court judge held that an existing child maintenance order made under the Women's Charter does not bind a court later asked to decide maintenance in guardianship proceedings, and that the later court may instead assess a reasonable sum afresh. The judge also kept care and control with the mother, raised monthly child maintenance from S$600 to S$3,000, and ordered that trusteeship of the children's Child Development Accounts follow the parent with care and control.
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National Projects Construction Corp. v. Ishvakoo: A Losing Arbitration Claim Does Not Always Bar Interim Court Relief
The Supreme Court upheld an order directing a company to deposit Rs. 3.5 crores encashed under bank guarantees with a High Court registry, even though the party seeking that protection had lost its underlying arbitration claim. Applying its recent ruling that an unsuccessful arbitral party may invoke Section 9 of the Arbitration Act in rare and compelling cases, the Court held that retaining the money pending a Section 34 challenge to the award would unjustly enrich the company that already held it.
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Harpreet Sawhney v. Puneet Sharma: Why a Father's Retirement Savings Do Not Shrink His Income for Child Maintenance
The Supreme Court raised a Delhi couple's child maintenance after finding that the High Court had let the husband's provident fund and stock plan contributions count as compulsory deductions from his income, when they were in fact savings that would eventually come back to him. The Court also noticed that the High Court's final order had silently dropped the wife's own personal maintenance, awarded earlier after she was diagnosed with cancer, and restored and increased it. Maintenance for the two children rose to Rs. 1,50,000 a month combined, and the wife's personal support rose to Rs. 30,000 a month.
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13 August 2026
Arbitration & Enforcement
Devas Multimedia v. Antrix Corp.: A Purely Foreign Arbitral Award Can Still Be Enforced in US Courts
The Ninth Circuit held that a foreign arbitral award between two Indian parties, arising from a dispute with no direct connection to American commerce, can still be confirmed and enforced against a foreign state owned company's assets in the United States. The court found that neither the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act's arbitration exception nor the doctrine of forum non conveniens requires any American nexus, leaving the district court to separately address, on remand, what effect a later Indian court ruling that set the award aside should have on enforcement here.
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Basudev v. Sanjay Kumar: A Suit and a Counterclaim Can Be Challenged in One Composite Appeal
The Supreme Court settled a long running split among High Courts on whether a suit and a counterclaim decided together by one judgment must be challenged through two separate appeals or can be challenged through one. It held that a single composite appeal suffices, provided the appeal states the grounds against each decree separately and pays court fees as though two appeals had been filed.
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8 August 2026
Arbitration & Enforcement
Shenzhen Zehuijin Investment Center v. Liu Yingkui: living in a state is enough for jurisdiction, even without in-hand service
The Ninth Circuit held that physical presence in a state supports general personal jurisdiction over an individual, even where service of process is made by leaving papers with a cotenant, by mail, and by email rather than directly in the defendant's hands. The court also held that a defendant who raises only a personal jurisdiction defense in his motion to dismiss waives any separate challenge to the adequacy of service. It affirmed confirmation of a Chinese arbitral award against a borrower who had relocated to California.
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8 August 2026
Intellectual Property
VIP Products v. Jack Daniel's Properties: parody dog toy defeats trademark dilution claim
The Ninth Circuit held that Jack Daniel's failed to prove its Bad Spaniels dog toy diluted its whiskey trademarks by tarnishment. Only the Jack Daniel's word mark and trade dress were shown to be famous, and generic expert testimony could not establish that an obvious parody harmed their reputation. The court vacated the injunction against the toy and ordered judgment entered for its maker, VIP Products.
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8 August 2026
Matrimonial & Family
Ali v. Osman: A Talaq Divorce From Sudan Gets No Comity in North Dakota
A husband tried to stop his wife's North Dakota divorce case by pointing to a divorce certificate he had obtained years earlier in Sudan through a unilateral Islamic procedure called talaq. The North Dakota Supreme Court held that recognizing a foreign divorce is a discretionary comity question, not a jurisdictional bar, and upheld the trial court's refusal to recognize the certificate because the wife never received notice or a chance to be heard. The Court also affirmed the domestic violence findings and the resulting custody, property, and support awards, and fined the husband for citing nonexistent case law.
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6 August 2026
Matrimonial & Family
YGP v YGQ: Maintenance Means Money, Not a Credit Card
A Singapore Family Court dismisses a wife's bid to increase her own maintenance, including a request that her husband reinstate a cancelled credit card, holding that the court's power to vary maintenance extends only to sums of money and that a consent order will rarely be reopened for expenses a party chose or failed to include at the time, while allowing a narrower increase in child maintenance for genuinely new, welfare related expenses already being paid.
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6 August 2026
Immigration & Visas
Plaintiff M98/2025 v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship: A Misread Answer That Would Not Have Changed the Outcome
The High Court of Australia holds that even though an immigration delegate appears to have misread a transgender asylum seeker's interview answers as abandoning his wish for gender affirming surgery, the error made no difference, since the bare unavailability of that surgery in his home country was never, on the evidence before the delegate, capable of meeting the legal threshold for protection.
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4 August 2026
Civil Procedure & Limitation
Samsung E&A v Linklaters: A Narrower Question Means Most of the Documents Stay Hidden
The Singapore High Court largely refuses to order a global law firm to produce documents sought by companies trying to disqualify it from an arbitration over an alleged conflict of interest, holding that most of the documents were framed around a broader theory of conflict the court finds is not actually the material question, and that a law firm cannot waive the privilege belonging to its own clients even when it is the firm's own conduct under scrutiny.
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National Insurance Co. v Thungala Dhana Laxmi: A Nationwide Insurance Overhaul Built on One Very Old Claim
The Supreme Court uses a thirty year old compensation claim to issue a comprehensive set of nationwide directions on motor insurance, ordering a new four layer policy structure, technology driven enforcement against uninsured vehicles, and an extension of mandatory coverage periods, before finally resolving the individual appeal in its last few paragraphs by holding that a comprehensive policy covers a vehicle's owner even when travelling as a passenger.
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Delhi Technological University v B.S. Rawat: A Resignation Cannot Be Cashed In and Then Undone
The Supreme Court reverses reinstatement orders won by an employee who tried to withdraw a resignation four months after accepting its benefits and using it to secure his next job, holding that a defect in who accepted the resignation was cured by later ratification, and that in any case an employee who has already taken the full benefit of a resignation cannot turn around and treat it as though it never happened.
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3 August 2026
Matrimonial & Family
YCD v YCE: When Singapore Family Courts Will Order a DNA Paternity Test
A Singapore Family Court confirmed it has power, under the High Court's medical examination powers and its own inherent jurisdiction, to order a person to submit to DNA paternity testing. That power should be used sparingly, and only once the applicant shows on a balance of probabilities that the parties had intercourse during the period the child could have been conceived. Credibility problems in the mother's own account meant she fell short of that threshold here, so the application was dismissed while her related maintenance claim was stayed pending appeal.
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3 August 2026
Civil Procedure & Limitation
SS&C v. Bank of New York Mellon: Canada's Modern Test for Spoliation
The Supreme Court of Canada set out, for the first time in over a century, a four-part test for finding spoliation and confirmed that proof of it triggers a mandatory adverse inference, though the exact remedy stays discretionary. The bank's trial-stage damages formula, built around a gap in the evidence the bank itself created, was found untethered from the facts and set aside. The case returns to the Ontario Superior Court for the damages to be recalculated using inferences that actually fill the evidentiary gap left by the spoliation.
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Dr. Lokesh B.H. v State of Karnataka: Cruelty Does Not Check Whether a Couple Married First
The Supreme Court holds that Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalises cruelty by a husband or his relatives, extends to men in live-in relationships that carry the essential character of marriage and were entered with an intent to marry, holding that the same cruelty deserves the same criminal protection regardless of whether a wedding ceremony ever took place.
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3 August 2026
Property & Succession
Chang Yiuw Choon v Chong Yiuw Tham: A Family Promise the Siblings Could Not Enforce
Eight siblings claimed their late mother's oral arrangement with their brother entitled them to a share of a house he alone has owned since 1983. Singapore's High Court struck out the claim: even taking every pleaded fact as true, the siblings never pleaded facts capable of establishing a trust in their favour, and their own case, framed to dodge a foreign ownership law, ruled out the property interest their constructive trust claim required. The judgment also gives a rare full treatment of when a purely personal contractual right still counts as property capable of being held on trust.
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31 July 2026
Criminal & FIR
R v Sheikh and Others: A Different Method of Harm Does Not Break the Chain of Foresight
The Supreme Court restores convictions under a law designed to protect vulnerable people from unprovable domestic harm, holding that a later act of harm does not fall outside a defendant's foreseeable knowledge merely because it was carried out by a different method from an earlier, related act of abuse the defendant already knew about.
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Nisha v Municipal Council Sangrur: When Being Procedurally Right Would Have Left a Widow With Nothing
The Supreme Court awards compensation to the widow of a man killed by a stray bull nineteen years earlier, holding that sending her back to a civil court after this much delay would leave her with no remedy at all, and uses the case to survey cattle protection law across every Indian state before urging governments to build a proper compensation mechanism that, on this record, still barely exists.
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Mahendra Singh v State of Chhattisgarh: A Murder Trial Undone by a Missing Order From 1999
The Supreme Court acquits a man convicted of murder eighteen years after his arrest, and twenty seven years after the killing, because the trial court never passed the specific order required before a witness's testimony, given while he was still absconding, could later be used against him without cross-examination.
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31 July 2026
Commentary
Kea Investments Ltd v Wikeley: Fraud and the Limits of International Comity
The Supreme Court of New Zealand holds that proven fraud changes how courts must weigh international comity, and reinstates injunctions blocking enforcement of a fraudulently obtained Kentucky judgment worth more than 120 million US dollars.
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31 July 2026
Commentary
CNN17 v Minister for Immigration: Three Days Late Wasn't the Problem — Not Having Grounds Was
The Federal Court of Australia refuses to extend time for a self-represented asylum seeker to appeal — not chiefly because he filed three days late, but because 'the Tribunal was biased' and 'ignored my case,' without more, were never going to be grounds of appeal...
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31 July 2026
Consumer Protection & Product Liability
Wettbewerbszentrale v FOCUS Gesundheit: A Doctor Rating Seal Cannot Hide That Doctors Rated Themselves
Germany's Federal Court of Justice holds that health related quality seals sold to doctors for advertising use are subject to the strictest standard applied to health advertising, and sends a case back for fresh findings on whether a magazine's doctor rating seals properly disclosed that the underlying assessments relied heavily on the rated doctors' own self reported claims about their treatment performance.
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Reliance General Insurance v Om Parkash: A Licensing Officer's Word Cannot Override His Own Record
The Supreme Court restores an insurer's defence to a motor accident claim, holding that a High Court was wrong to accept a licensing officer's oral assurance that a driver's licence remained valid through a gap in official records, when the officer's own documentary evidence, along with a penalty paid specifically for that gap, contradicted him directly.
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Director of Income Tax v Star Cruises: A Round Trip Cruise Is Still Carriage of Passengers
The Supreme Court holds that a foreign cruise operator running round trip voyages out of Mumbai, offering onboard entertainment alongside transport, still qualifies as carrying passengers for the purposes of a special, simplified tax regime for foreign shipping businesses, rejecting the tax department's narrower reading after three lower forums had already agreed with the taxpayer.
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29 July 2026
Matrimonial & Family
In re N (Children): Sending a Care Case Abroad Takes More Than Finding the Better Court
The Supreme Court holds that a court asked to send a child protection case abroad under Brussels IIA must weigh the real consequences of transfer itself, separate from the question of which court is better placed to hear the case. Two young sisters keep their long-term foster home while the underlying dispute returns to the Family Division.
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Ramasrey v State of Uttar Pradesh: Reviewing Presidential Clemency Is Not the Same as Appealing It
The Supreme Court dismisses four petitions from convicts serving sentences of imprisonment for the remainder of natural life, holding that a settled five judge ruling cannot be reopened before a two judge bench, and that asking the Court to further reduce a sentence the President has already commuted through clemency is an appeal against that power, not judicial review of it.
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Otis Elevator v Rashmi Handa: The Supreme Court Treats a Lift as a Common Carrier
The Supreme Court holds that a passenger lift should be treated as a common carrier, and upholds a finding that the lift's manufacturer bore the largest share of liability for a fatal accident even though a government engineer's staff physically released the brake that caused it, because the manufacturer had known about the underlying defect for months and never fixed it.
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Nakhat Singh v Union of India: Why an Airman Cannot Get Selected First and Seek Permission Later
The Supreme Court holds that an Air Force order requiring an airman to seek permission before applying for a civil post is not a formality he can bypass and excuse afterward simply because he went on to be selected. Where a rule specifies what happens if it is not followed, that consequence confirms the rule was always meant to be obeyed, not treated as optional once a more attractive outcome appears.
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29 July 2026
Constitutional Law
Gade v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship: The Deadline Ran From a Date the Applicant Could Not Yet See
A former student's graduate visa was refused because his application arrived a matter of days after a strict six-month deadline. The deadline ran not from the day he could see his results, but from an earlier date fixed by his university and disclosed to him...
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29 July 2026
Constitutional Law
CUD21 v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship: The Tribunal Said 'Must.' The Direction Said 'Generally.' The Court Read Past the Difference.
A Tribunal found a man met the legal test for protection, then refused him a visa anyway on character grounds, and wrote that community protection 'must' be given greater weight where the governing Direction says only 'generally.' The Federal Court read that word against the...
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29 July 2026
Insolvency & Restructuring
Bailey v Angove's: When the Middleman Goes Bust, Being Owed Money Is Not the Same as Owning It
The Supreme Court holds that an agent's authority to collect a debt ends the moment the principal revokes it, even where the agent needs to keep collecting to recover its own commission. It also rejects a line of cases that let a principal claim a trust over money merely because the agent's insolvency made retaining it feel unconscionable. Both rulings favour the general body of an insolvent company's creditors over a single claimant trying to jump the queue.
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28 July 2026
Arbitration & Enforcement
Zhejiang Lishui Mengxiang v Pan: The Six-Week Window for Enforcing a Foreign Arbitration Award
The Federal Court enforces a Beijing arbitration award worth over 93 million yuan against individuals who never appeared — entering judgment immediately, but freezing it for six weeks to give them a real chance to object.
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28 July 2026
Intellectual Property
Tesla v InterDigital: Why a Patent Pool Still Has to Play Fair
The UK Supreme Court holds, unanimously, that a patent owner's promise to charge a fair price survives joining a licensing pool — letting Tesla drag the pool's operator into court to test whether its price for 5G patents is actually fair.
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Tejas Shah v Mantri Technology Constellations: A Moratorium Shields the Company, Not the People Behind It
The Supreme Court reaffirms that an IBC moratorium shields only the insolvent company named in the insolvency proceeding — not its directors, an associated company, or the landowners on its project — reviving a consumer complaint an apex forum had wrongly frozen against all seven...
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NHAI v Kurukshetra Expressway: A ₹911 Crore Award Falls for Rewriting the Contract It Was Meant to Interpret
The Delhi High Court sets aside a ₹911 crore arbitral termination payment, holding that a contractual notification mechanism cannot be read to silently override an express cost cap — one of the rarer instances of an award falling for 'patent illegality' rather than a mere difference of interpretation.
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28 July 2026
International & State Immunity
Bahrain v Shehabi: Why a Hack From Abroad Still Counts as 'Acting' in Britain
The UK Supreme Court holds, 3-2, that a state hacking a computer in Britain from abroad is still 'acting' in Britain — stripping Bahrain of immunity and reshaping how the law treats remote, automated conduct.
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State of Andhra Pradesh v. Suda Suresh Veera Venkata Naga Raju: To Probe a Custodial Death, the Supreme Court Eases the Custody Safeguards Meant to Prevent One
A police inspector under investigation for a custodial death was interrogated subject to conditions built to prevent further custodial abuse — confinement to a distant prison, uninterrupted videography, a hard deadline. The Supreme Court held these conditions defeated the investigation into the death itself, and...
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The Battle for '20-20': An Unused Trademark Application Defeats Eighteen Years of Biscuit Sales
The Delhi High Court holds that an eighteen-year-old, never-used trademark application defeats a famous biscuit brand's own registration and market presence — because priority under the Trade Marks Act is fixed at the filing date, not the date of actual use, and the entire delay was the Trade Marks Registry's own making.
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