A European-wide Preservation Order: How the Common Law Practice Can Contribute
"Milking a dry udder gets you nothing but kicked off the milking stool," as an old saying goes. Having this in mind, a claimant would not normally bring proceedings unless he or she is confident that the defendant has sufficient funds for satisfying a judgment.1 Modem technological developments, such as the possibility to transfer funds between bank accounts rapidly, allow defendants to dispose of their assets very easily. Consequently, claimants run a risk that by the time they attempt to enforce a favourable judgment-which they fought very hard to obtain-the defendant will be left with no assets to satisfy it and thus the claimants' investment in litigation will have been worthless.2 To overcome this problem, judges and legislators came up with a type of order whereby a litigant may apply-usually ex parte-for his or her opponent's assets to be preserved until the end of the proceedings. The name and nature of these "preservation orders" varies between the different legal systems, but they are most commonly known as freezing or attachment orders. Click to open document
