Anchor defendant
In law, an anchor defendant is a person who is made a defendant to a claim for the primary purpose of vesting jurisdiction to hear the claim in a certain court. Usually the purpose of the anchor defendant is to allow claims to be brought in a certain court against another defendant (not the anchor defendant) over whom the relevant court would not otherwise have jurisdiction. Accordingly, use of anchor defendants is often a variation of forum shopping. The reference to an anchor is metaphorical; "anchoring" the proceedings to the relevant jurisdiction where they might otherwise naturally drift to another court. Basis The use of anchor defendants as a litigation strategy relies upon two basic principles common to most legal systems. The first is that where a cause of action involves claims against multiple parties, it is convenient for all of those claims to be tried together to avoid the risk of inconsistent results. The second is that courts in different jurisdictions should seek to avoid holding concurrent trials relating to the same claims (this is usually referred to as the doctrine of lis alibi pendens), both the avoid the risk of inconsistent results and to avoid defendants having to respond to the same claims in different courts. Accordingly, whilst there is a general recognition that courts should only entertain actions against defendants over whom they have jurisdiction, most systems will expand this to include another defendant who is a necessary and property to a claim where there is proper jurisdiction over one of the defendants. For example, with the European Union, Article 6 of the Brussels I Regulation provides: "A person domiciled in a Contracting State may also be sued: (1) where he is one of a number of defendants, in the courts for the place where any one of them is domiciled;" Similarly, the English Civil Procedure Rules provide in RSC Order 11 (found in Schedule 1): "Rule 1 (1) Provided that the claim form does not contain any claim mentioned in Order 75, r.2 (1) and is not a claim form to which paragraph (2) of this rule applies, a claim form may be served out of the jurisdiction with the permission of the Court if— ... (c) the claim is brought against a person duly served within or out of the jurisdiction and a person out of the jurisdiction is a necessary or proper party thereto;" Limitations As with other types of forum shopping, the courts in various jurisdictions have taken steps to try to prevent the abuse of court systems by using anchor defendants. However, attempts to do so will always be limited by the powerful countervailing considerations of the need to ensure that all connected actions should be tried by a single court where ever possible. For example, in Sharples v Eason & Son it was held that leave ought not be given to serve a claim outside of the jurisdiction if the sole, or predominant, reason for beginning the action a party duly