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03-Profile Gooding:mag
4/18/11
11:31 AM
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The case
of the
accidental
aviator
Christopher Gooding, a London-based
partner with Fasken Martineau LLP,
learned to negotiate at the barrel
of a gun. Then his career really
got interesting.
AIRLINER IMAGE:NIGEL PENGELLY
“O
ne of the most difficult moments of
my career was explaining to my then
six-year-old son why there were men
in forage caps with guns measuring
angles of fire in our back garden,”
says Christopher Gooding, a partner
in the London office of Fasken Martineau LLP.
It is just one tiny vignette from one of the most extraordinary pieces of litigation ever undertaken, and the longest commercial case in the history of the English courts. It is a fitting
coincidence that Fasken’s UK base happens to be the registered
office of Guinness World Records Limited.
Gooding, an English solicitor, acts for Kuwait Airways
Corporation (KAC), which, since January 1991, has been in
court seeking compensation from Iraqi Airways
Corporation (IAC) and the government of Iraq (hence his
continuing need for “close” personal protection) over the
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seizure and theft of KAC’s entire civil aviation fleet during
the first Gulf War.
The ten commercial airliners were almost immediately
flown out of Kuwait to Iraq, along with millions of dollars
worth of spares. Four were destroyed during a U.S. Air Force
attack on Mosul, while Gooding eventually negotiated the
return of the other six from Iran, where they had been sent for
“safekeeping” for $20-million (U.S.)
What followed has included nearly 40 decisions in the
English courts (including four in the House of Lords/Supreme
Court), several in the Canadian courts — reaching the
Supreme Court of Canada last year — and legal battles in
other jurisdictions around the world where IAC operates.
Gooding says the litigation has rewritten large parts of public
international law around state immunity, conflict of laws, aviation law and tort. “It’s unique because fascinating legal issues
crop up time after time after time,” he says.
N AT I O N A L
April · May 2011
CHRIS GLOAG
By Neil Rose
03-Profile Gooding:mag
4/18/11
11:25 AM
Page 31
Christopher Gooding
Fasken Martineau LLP, London, England
“I always believe that there are normally
pressure points that can be brought to bear
involving law, but thinking that there’s a legal
solution in the context of . . . politically
sensitive disputes is to miss the point.”
But it is, he acknowledges, the anecdotes that give the case
its flavour, whether it is organizing a witness protection program, co-operating with the FBI to raid aircraft spares warehouses in Florida, or the experience of running KIA for five
years as a virtual airline — right down to crew rosters, flight
plans, flight slots and landing rights — for the purposes of
assessing consequential losses.
Avril · Mai 2011
From court to Le Carré
After years of rulings that Iraq had sovereign immunity for
taking the planes because it was an Act of War, evidence
uncovered in the early part of the last decade — hidden behind
the walls of a Baghdad apartment after a daring raid directed
by Gooding from just over the border in Jordan — proved that
IAC staff in fact had been instrumental in taking the planes.
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Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait in 1990 and were
repelled by coalition forces after an aerial bombardment and ground assault in 1991. Kuwait
City suffered heavy damage during the war.
He describes the efforts to get the evidence as owing “more
to Le Carré than the White Book,” referring to the guide to
civil procedure in the English courts.
This led the English High Court to overturn the finding of
sovereign immunity and rule that IAC officials had committed
perjury. Mr. Justice David Steel said in 2005: “In my judgment, the evidence is overwhelming that IAC has throughout
this litigation pursued a deliberate and sophisticated policy of
non-disclosure, suppression and concealment of relevant documents, particularly those prejudicial to its legal position, a
policy that has been revealed not to stop short of forging documents to make good otherwise damaging gaps.”
KAC now holds judgments on the correct facts totalling
over $1.2-billion (U.S.) against IAC and $87-million in costs
against the State of Iraq on the basis that the state had directed and paid for the litigation.
There seemed little opportunity to enforce the judgment;
then the Iraqi government really opened a chink when it
announced a $4.5-billion order for new aircraft from Boeing
and Bombardier in Montreal. So in 2008 the case entered
the Canadian courts. KAC seized IAC and Iraqi state interests
in the order from Bombardier as it sought to enforce the
English judgments.
KAC claims that the formal contract between Iraq’s
Ministry of Finance and Bombardier is a sham and that the
real contract is between IAC and Bombardier. The fight continues in the Quebec courts, although the total value of the
contract falls well short of the full amount of the judgments
held by KAC.
After the lower courts went against KAC — which Mr
Gooding describes as “a rejection by Quebec of the international interpretation of state immunity” — the Supreme Court
of Canada found last year that Iraq was not entitled to plead
state immunity.
So the proceedings to enforce the judgment have begun
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again, and in January, 20 years to the day from the start of the
litigation, the Court of Appeal of Quebec summarily dismissed
appeals against a trial court judgment, which rejected further
jurisdictional and procedural objections. “This leaves the way
clear for trial of the merits of KAC’s claims relating to the
Bombardier contract,” Gooding says, calling it “true poetic
justice” to receive “such a dismissive judgment on that day.”
A further chink came last year, when IAC made its
much-heralded first scheduled flight from Baghdad to
London in 20 years. Gooding was waiting with an injunction to seize all IAC assets in England and Wales (excluding
the plane itself, which was chartered) and hold the IAC’s
director-general in the country for questioning about the
company’s assets.
Busier than ever
At the start of this year, to mark the 20th anniversary,
Gooding hosted a reception for the 85 lawyers, experts and
others who have been involved in the case over the years. His
original legal team included Tony Clarke, QC, now Supreme
Court Justice Lord Clarke, and Rosalyn Higgins, now a
Dame and a former president of the International Court of
Justice. Joe Smouha, QC, was the other member of the original four who first sat down to plot the strategy of the case,
and remains involved.
Gooding keeps a small team himself and highlights the contribution of Sukhi Kaler, who became a partner at Fasken in
February. “I don’t believe in large teams just for the sake of
large teams,” he says. “Sukhi’s been an absolute rock of support over the years and the pair of us have done the lion’s
share of the work.”
And there are no signs of it ending any time soon — after
four years when he says “we’ve been busier than we’ve ever
been before on the case,” working on it almost full-time,
Gooding says a completely new claim has just been served,
and further appeals are almost inevitable. With Iraq announcing plans to dissolve its national carrier, Gooding now has to
convince the English courts that the government should cover
IAC’s liabilities.
A self-confessed “accidental aviator,” his route to the case
began as a shipping solicitor in the City of London with a
long-held love of the Middle East. Gooding soon found himself “jumping on and off burning tankers in the Gulf during
the tanker war between Iran and Iraq.”
Through his work in the region and particularly on the
N AT I O N A L
April · May 2011
COURTESY: KUWAIT ARIWAYS CORPORATION
03-Profile Gooding:mag
03-Profile Gooding:mag
4/18/11
11:26 AM
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L’aviateur
accidentel
Christopher Gooding a appris l’art de la
négociation lorsqu’il s’est retrouvé face a
un pirate qui pointait une Kalashnikov
sur lui. C’est à partir de là que sa carrière
est devenue intéressante.
« L’
un des moments les plus
difficiles de ma carrière a
été d’expliquer à mon fils
de six ans pourquoi des hommes avec des
casques militaires calculaient des angles de
tir dans notre cour arrière », raconte
Christopher Gooding, associé dans le
bureau de londonien de Fasken Martineau.
Me Gooding, un avocat anglais, représente la Kuwait Airways Corporation
(KAC). Depuis janvier 1991, KAC poursuit la
Iraqi Airways Corporation (IAC) et le gouvernement irakien pour obtenir compensation pour la saisie de toute son aviation
civile durant la première guerre du Golfe.
Avec une quarantaine de décisions dans
les cours anglaises (incluant quatre de la
Chambre des Lords), plusieurs au Canada
(jusqu’en Cour suprême l’an dernier) et
d’autres aux quatre coins du monde, c’est
l’un des litiges les plus extraordinaires de
l’histoire — et le plus long des anales judiciaires anglaises.
L’avocat estime que la cause a réécrit de
larges pans du droit international public,
tant sur les questions de l’immunité des
États et des conflits de lois que du droit de
l’aviation et de la responsabilité civile.
« Des questions de droits fascinantes surgissent sans cesse », dit-il.
Mais c’est d’abord et avant tout les
anecdotes qui donnent toute sa saveur au
dossier; que ce soit de mettre en place un
système de protection des témoins, de collaborer avec le FBI pour mener des raids
dans des entrepôts de la Floride pour
retrouver des pièces ou de gérer pendant
cinq ans une compagnie d’aviation virtuelle pour évaluer les dommages subis.
Digne d’un roman Le Carré
Pendant longtemps, des décisions ont accordé l’immunité à l’Iraq parce que la saisie
des avions et des pièces représentait un acte
de guerre. Mais des éléments trouvés dans
les murs d’un appartement de Bagdad, à la
suite d’un raid audacieux dirigé par Me
Gooding à partir de la Jordanie, ont prouvé
que des employés de IAC avaient joué un
rôle important dans l’opération.
Résultat : KAC détient maintenant un jugement d’une valeur de 1,2 milliard $ à l’encontre de IAC et de 87 millions $ en frais dus
par l’État irakien.
Les possibilités de faire respecter la décision semblaient minces, jusqu’à ce que
Bagdad annonce une commande d’une
valeur de 4,5 milliards $ pour l’achat de
nouveaux avions à Boeing et Bombardier,
à Montréal.
La bataille s’est donc transportée devant
les tribunaux québécois, montant jusqu’à la
Cour suprême du Canada l’an dernier, qui a
tranché que l’Iraq ne pouvait invoquer l’immunité étatique. Puis, au mois de janvier
suivant, soit 20 ans jour pour jour depuis le
début du litige, la Cour d’appel du Québec a
rejeté d’autres arguments et objections
procédurales, ce qui « laisse maintenant la
voie libre pour procéder au mérite sur la
question du contrat avec Bombardier », se
réjouit Me Goodings. Il qualifie la coïncidence de « véritable justice poétique ».
Parcours atypique
Se décrivant lui-même comme un « aviateur
accidentel », Me Gooding a débuté son parcours comme jeune avocat spécialisé en droit
maritime pour la ville de Londres, habité
Arab War Risk Syndicate, a grouping of international insurers offering war cover to insurers operating in the Middle
East, he sat on the war board of Lloyd’s of London, becoming a specialist in the interrelationship between war and
political risk clauses in insurance and then co-ordinating all
Avril · Mai 2011
d’une passion pour le Moyen-Orient.
C’est son poste au conseil de guerre de
la Lloyd’s de Londres, où il est devenu spécialiste des relations entre les guerres et les
clauses de risques politiques en assurance,
qui l’a conduit à conseiller la KAC.
Inutile de dire que ses compétences et
sa vision du droit se sont développées en
marge des sentiers battus. L’art de la
négociation, par exemple, lui a été inculqué « très jeune (…) en négociant avec
un pirate du Djibouti qui avait une
Kalashnikov pointée sur moi », raconte-t-il.
« J’ai eu une évolution très, très axée sur
la pratique », convient l’avocat.
Ce parcours et le côté éminemment politique de son travail ont aussi contribué à ce
que Me Gooding développe une approche
qui n’est pas nécessairement axée sur le droit.
« Étant un spécialiste du Moyen-Orient
depuis aussi longtemps, mais également de
l’Afrique et d’autres parties du monde plus
difficiles comme l’Amérique du Sud, je ne
suis pas un grand adepte des solutions
juridiques », dit-il.
« Je crois toujours qu’il y a des points
de pression qui peuvent être appliqués et
qui impliquent le droit. Mais de croire
qu’il y a une solution légale dans le contexte des États, dans le contexte de situations politiques sensibles, c’est passer à
côté du problème. »
Dans le dossier des avions koweitiens,
malgré toutes les années qui ont passé et le
travail qui reste à faire, il demeure convaincu que ses efforts et ceux de son
équipe porteront des fruits. « Nous allons
tout recouvrer. Je n’en ai aucun doute »,
tranche-t-il. N
of the claims faced by Lloyd’s arising out of the first Gulf War.
He was initially instructed by KAC’s insurers on the day
the planes were taken, before taking on the airline itself as
the client. “There is a massive subrogated claim buried in
the $1.2-billion.”
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“Every single
that no law school can teach. Negotiation, for example, was
learned rather rapidly in 1983 when “I was a very young, wetbehind-the-ears lawyer, negotiating with a pirate in Djibouti
who had a Kalashnikov trained
on me.”
He reflects: “I’m just back
from Vancouver and talking to
some of our managing partners
there. We were saying that the
wonderful thing about life in
those days, and this isn’t just
being nostalgic, was that young
lawyers were pushed out into the
world and were allowed to earn
their spurs, very often right up the
front end, as I was then. That just
isn’t available to young lawyers anymore, and I do think we’re
the poorer for it. I had a very, very practical upbringing.”
What the highly political nature of his work also means is
that Gooding has developed an approach that is far from just
about the law. “Part of my stock-in-trade is finding pressure
points which one can bring to bear in achieving results with
states. That can be in a litigious situation, it can be in a commercial situation.
“Having specialized in the Middle East for so long, but
also in Africa and in rather more difficult areas of the world
such as South America, I’m not a great believer in legal remedies. I always believe that there are normally pressure points
that can be brought to bear involving law, but thinking that
there’s a legal solution in the context of states, in the context
of politically sensitive disputes, is
person in Kuwait lost
to miss the point.”
Canadian qualities
one or two relatives in this invasion. It
Great fortitude
Gooding has moved around a few
all seems misty history, but it’s not to There has been considerable internalaw firms during the course of the
tional pressure on Kuwait to drop
case and had actually vowed not the individuals in Kuwait, and it’s not
the case, to stop living in the past
to join another one because he did to the Kuwaiti people.”
and to let the new Iraq have a
not like the way modern partnernational carrier — an important sign of statehood — that can
ships do business.
That was, however, until Fasken came knocking, “which is freely roam the skies without fear of Gooding leaping on it with
a great compliment to them.” The firm operates, he explains, an injunction.
But he argues that it is an important part of Iraq’s efforts to
like an old-fashioned partnership. “There is a rather extraordinary idea that partners work for each other, and that we’re normalize relations with Kuwait (notwithstanding the much
larger UN reparations program). It is, perhaps, too easy to
all in it together, which is an unqualified delight.”
He sees “a lot of Canadian qualities” in the way Fasken look at this case from Iraq’s point of view.
“The Kuwaitis have had to suffer straightforward lies for
works. “They’re quite slow to get involved, they’re quite slow
to invest, they’re quite slow to act. They take a lot of time 15 years, and we got knocked back and knocked back and
thinking about it, but once they’re in, they stick with it, which knocked back in the litigation sense. They’ve said, ‘We know
is very much at odds with the sort of the quick-buck approach what happened, we know what we believe, we’re going to
keep at it.’ And there aren’t many clients that would have had
of U.S. firms.”
Ironically, the link-up came too late for the Canadian liti- that degree of fortitude.
“They lost their country. Every single person in Kuwait lost
gation, however, as Gooding is working with long-time contact Laurent Fortier, a partner in the Montreal office of one or two relatives in this invasion. It’s a very small country,
Stikeman Elliott. “By the time I moved they were so deeply people are very closely connected by family, and everybody
embedded in the case that there was no question of moving. It lost a family member. People forget that these days, it all seems
leads to vast amusement every time I turn up to court with my misty history, but it’s not to the individuals in Kuwait, and it’s
Fasken files and their Stikeman files. But it’s very practical — not to the Kuwaiti people.”
Though the end is not in sight for this incredible piece of
it would have been a total waste of money to have brought a
litigation, Gooding is convinced that he will eventually precompletely new team on-board.”
vail. “We will receive a full recovery on this one,” he says firmly. “I’ve got very little doubt about that.” N
Pressure points
The law is often just the context that frames the kind of work
Gooding has done. He has had to develop the kind of skills Neil Rose is a freelance writer based in London, England.
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N AT I O N A L
April · May 2011
COURTESY: KUWAIT ARIWAYS CORPORATION
03-Profile Gooding:mag