The Effect of Choice of Court Agreements on Third Parties: Lecture by Professor Yeo Tiong Min
The Yong Pung How Professorship of Law Lecture 2022 will be held online on Wednesday 25 May 2022 at 5:00 to 6:30pm Singapore time. The speaker, Professor Yeo Tiong Min, SC (Hon), who holds the Yong Pung How Professorship of Law chair at the Singapore Management University, will speak on ‘ The Effect of Choice of Court Agreements on Third Parties’. The synopsis for the talk is as follows:
“The effect of choice of court agreements on the exercise of jurisdiction of the Singapore court between contracting parties at common law has received clarification in Singapore law in recent years. The position is also clear under the SICC Rules and the Choice of Court Agreements Act. The effect on third parties is less clear. In this lecture, the effect of choice of court agreements on the position of third parties under the legal regimes above will be considered, from the perspective of both conflict of laws and the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act in domestic Singapore law.”
Attendance at the webinar is complimentary. More information and the link to register can be found here.
This looks to be a very interesting talk! I recently published a paper that surveys the case law in the United States with respect to this question. It’s available here:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3846436
The very short version is that whether choice-of-court clauses bind non-signatories depends on who, exactly, is invoking the clause and for what purpose. It’s one thing when a third party are seeking to take advantage of the clause. It’s quite another when a contracting party is seeking to enforce the clause against a third party without its consent.