Anisminia

ANISMINIC

1. What are the facts of the case? 

As a result of the Suez Crisis some mining properties of the appellant Anisminic located in the Sinai peninsula were seized by the Egyptian government before November 1956. The appellants then sold the mining properties to an Egyptian government-owned organisation called TEDO in 1957.

In 1959, a piece of subordinate legislation was passed under the Foreign Compensation Act 1950 to distribute compensation paid by the Egyptian government to the UK government with respect to British properties it had nationalised. The appellants claimed that they were eligible for compensation under this piece of subordinate legislation, which was determined by a tribunal (the respondents in this case) set up under the Foreign Compensation Act 1950.

The tribunal, however, decided that the appellants were not eligible for compensation, because their "successors in title" (TEDO) did not have the British nationality as required under one of the provisions of the subordinate legislation.

2. What is the exclusion clause in the 1950 Act? 

S4(4) : decide who gets compensation

3. How did Lord Reid interpret the word ‘determination’ found in S4(4) of the 1950 Act? 

They say that "determination" means a real determination and does not include an apparent or purported determination which in the eyes of the law has no existence because it is a nullity. Or, putting it in another way, if one seeks to show that a determination is a nullity, one is not questioning the purported determination--one is maintaining that it does not exist as a determination. It is one thing to question a determination which does exist; it is quite another thing to say that there is nothing to be questioned

Purported determination is reviewable [decision based on assumptions] whereas a real determination is not

4. What is an error of jurisdiction?

Inherent jurisdiction: determine question of court in whatever jurisdiction

it has done or failed to...