It has been longer than usual since the last of these. The courts have been quite active, and the appellate benches in particular have been remarkably busy.

In the DIFC, start (we think) with Ganesan Muthiah v Abdul Rahman Mohammad [2026] DIFC CA 007, which decides what a determination of the Conflicts of Jurisdiction Tribunal does, and does not do, to orders the DIFC Court has already made. Al Buhaira National Insurance Company v Arab War Risks Insurance Syndicate [2026] DIFC CA 003 sets aside an implied term for defence costs said to arise from custom in the Middle East reinsurance market. Al Mheiri v Cameron [2025] DIFC CA 008 allows an appeal on the adequacy of the judge's reasons and orders a partial retrial before a differently constituted court. At first instance, Justice Mark Pelling set aside a DIFC-seated DIAC award of over USD 18m for procedural unfairness.

In the ADGM, the penalty rule has arrived. Three decisions in four months now engage Cavendish Square: one striking down a daily penalty, and in Sowwah Square Investment v Forever Rose Retail [2026] ADGMCFI 0024 a commercial leasing decision in which Justice Paul Heath KC upheld a late payment fee and a liquidated damages clause, while declining to settle the outer limits of the rule in the absence of a contradictor. Justice Sir Andrew Smith has given a second substantial trust-directions judgment, and the NMC estate continues to generate work.

In the QFC, the Tamam Capital dispute we flagged in the last note has been decided. The Court has found unfair prejudice under article 134 of the QFC Companies Regulations 2005 and ordered a director to buy out a minority shareholder personally. Two jurisdiction decisions follow it below, one of which splits a challenge cause of action by cause of action.

One new DIFC Practice Direction, on adjournments, took effect in July. No new DIFC Laws, Regulations, Amendment Laws or Enactment Notices, no new ADGM Courts Regulations or Court Procedure Rules amendments, and no new QFC Practice Directions in the period.

New judgments: DIFC

Court of Appeal

[2026] DIFC CA 007 - Ganesan Muthiah v Abdul Rahman Mohammad (link). Court: DIFC Court of Appeal. Date: 14 July 2026. Judgment of the Court of Appeal (H.E. Deputy Chief Justice Ali Al Madhani, H.E. Justice Patrick Anthony Keane and H.E. Justice Lim Thiam Suan). Case number: CA 007/2026. Hearing: 22 June 2026. Mr Patrick Dillon-Malone, instructed by Clyde & Co LLP, for the Appellant; Mr Quentin Tannock, instructed by Hamdan Al Shamsi Lawyers & Legal Consultants LLC, for the Respondent.

This is the most consequential DIFC decision in this period, and it concerns what happens to your existing orders when the Conflicts of Jurisdiction Tribunal steps in. In August 2025 the Court of First Instance had set aside a default judgment, discharged a worldwide freezing order, found service defective and awarded the appellant costs assessed at AED 1,059,592, an assessment the Court set aside of its own motion the following month in favour of assessment on the standard basis. In October 2025 the CJT determined, under Dubai Decree No. 29 of 2024, that the Dubai Courts should hear the dispute and that "the DIFC Courts shall cease hearing" the claim. The judge then vacated the August orders in their entirety, of his own motion and without inviting submissions, treating the CJT determination as having retrospectively withdrawn the Court's authority to make them.

The Court of Appeal held that it did no such thing. The CJT did not purport to vacate the earlier orders, said nothing to suggest the DIFC Court had lacked jurisdiction to make them, and was concerned to prevent conflicting judgments going forward rather than to undo rulings already made. A direction to cease hearing a case recognises that the court has been hearing it. The appeal was allowed, the October orders set aside, and the respondent ordered to pay costs of AED 200,000.

We think one should resist the temptation to read it more widely than it goes. The Court expressly declined to decide whether the Decree would permit the CJT to withdraw jurisdiction retrospectively, holding that deference to the CJT's constitutional position made it unnecessary and inappropriate to do so. The bench also found it unnecessary to decide the procedural fairness ground. The ratio is narrow, and it is about the construction of what this CJT actually said.

[2026] DIFC CA 003 - Al Buhaira National Insurance Company v Arab War Risks Insurance Syndicate (link). Court: DIFC Court of Appeal. Date: 10 August 2026. Judgment of the Court of Appeal (H.E. Chief Justice Wayne Martin, H.E. Justice Sir Peter Gross and H.E. Justice Patrick Anthony Keane). Case number: CA 003/2026. Hearing: 29 to 30 June 2026. Mr Nicholas Craig KC, instructed by Clyde & Co LLP, for the Claimant; Mr Alex Potts KC, instructed by Pinsent Masons, for the Defendant.

A substantial reinsurance appeal arising from the disappearance of the tanker M/T BETA, and the fullest treatment the DIFC Court of Appeal has yet given to the interaction between English law and regional market custom. This is an interesting one, Albeit niche. It is going to be of particular interest to insurance/reinsurance practitioners.

Three things came out of it. The reinsurance contract is governed by English law. The Court went further than the judge, holding that the incorporation of London market wordings and Institute Clauses compelled the conclusion that the parties impliedly chose English law, within article 8(2)(c) of the Law on the Application of Civil and Commercial Laws in the DIFC, and that closest connection would have produced the same answer anyway. The Placement Note forms part of the reinsurance contract. The request to "return a copy hereof duly stamped and signed" was directed at orderly record keeping rather than imposing a condition that excluded acceptance by conduct, and acceptance by conduct is what happened across four successive years. That matters because the Placement Note carries the clause requiring the reinsurer to follow all settlements agreed between the ceding company and the insured.

There is a costs point, which is where practitioners may find of general interest. The judge had found an implied term, by custom of the UAE and wider Middle East reinsurance market, that reinsurers indemnify the reinsured for defence costs unless they contract out. The Court of Appeal did not disturb his findings of fact about the practice, which were open to him on the evidence. It set the term aside anyway, on two grounds: the term was inconsistent with the express limits of cover in the Cover Note and Placement Note, applying Insurance Co of Africa v Scor (UK) Reinsurance Co Ltd; and it was unreasonable, because the risk ultimately reaches the London market, where no equivalent practice exists, so a Middle Eastern reinsurer would carry an unlimited defence costs exposure with no route to pass it on. A London retrocessionaire may have no notice of a custom that appears nowhere on the face of the primary layer, and the Court treated that as bearing on the reasonableness of implying the term at all, not as deciding anything about what binds a retrocessionaire.

Because the claimant abandoned the grounds that would have produced an issue estoppel, the Court made fresh declarations to secure one: that the claimant was not in breach of the duty of good faith or fair presentation, and that its claim was notified and brought in time. Costs were left to written submissions.

The Court also applied its own recent decision in Krystal Financial Consultants v Nextgen Robopark, covered in our last note, on the scope of appellate review. The distinction it draws, between findings resting on contested oral testimony and conclusions the appellate court is equally well placed to reach, does a great deal of work here. Worth reading the two together.

[2025] DIFC CA 008 - Khaled Salem Musabeh Humad Al Mheiri v John Cameron (link). Court: DIFC Court of Appeal. Date: 1 September 2026. Judgment of the Court of Appeal (H.E. Chief Justice Wayne Martin, H.E. Justice Robert French and H.E. Justice Sir Peter Gross). Case number: CA 008/2025. Hearing: 21 July 2026. Ms Maria Mulla and Mr Sajid Suleman, instructed by Dr Mahmood Hussain Advocates and Legal Consultancy Ltd, for the Appellant; Mr Nils de Wolff, instructed by Greenberg Traurig Limited, for the Respondent.

A claim on an indemnity agreement for AED 91,250,000, defeated at trial on the basis that the respondent had signed in reliance on fraudulent misrepresentations under articles 185 to 187 of the UAE Civil Code. No ground of appeal challenged a finding of fact. The complaint was that the judge had not found the facts his conclusions required, and had not set out the reasoning that got him there.

The Court agreed. Grounds 1 and 3 succeeded: the findings were incapable of sustaining the conclusion that the appellant was responsible for deceitful representations, and there was no finding of inducement in relation to several of the representations held to be deceitful. Ground 4 succeeded in part, on the inadequacy of the reasons given for holding the appellant liable for statements made by his agent. The judge's three findings on that issue did not correspond to the conditions for ostensible authority under UAE law that had been put before him and were not contentious.

Two questions of UAE law were left open for the retrial, both of them live for anyone litigating agency and misrepresentation in this court: whether article 190 states the only route by which a contracting party can be held liable for another's deceit, and whether a principal is liable for fraudulent representations made by an agent acting with ostensible authority. Neither party had provided textual or expert material on either. Ground 5, on the effect of the entire agreement clause, was also left to the Court of First Instance, the Court declining to decide it before the relevant findings on deceit have been made.

The Court ordered a retrial rather than remitting for further reasons. It relied on Flannery, on the delay between trial and remission, on the point that reasons produced after the decision cannot deliver the discipline that reasons are supposed to impose, and on the fact that the respondent had never articulated the facts, the principles of UAE law or the reasoning supporting his case. The retrial is limited to deceit and mistake, before a differently constituted Court of First Instance, and the Court gave a pleading timetable to make the respondent set that case out. Grounds 2 and 6 were dismissed, the latter an unsuccessful attack on the weight given to untested hearsay where no application had been made under RDC 29.102 to cross-examine. The respondent pays 85% of the appellant's costs of the appeal and both permission applications.

Court of First Instance and Arbitration Division

ARB 015/2026 and ARB 027/2026 - Princeton v Persephone (link). Court: DIFC Court of First Instance. Date: 14 August 2026. Order with Reasons of H.E. Justice Mark Pelling. Parties anonymised.

A DIFC-seated DIAC award for USD 18,493,065 plus interest and costs, set aside under articles 41(2)(a)(ii) and (iii) of the DIFC Arbitration Law. Successful set-aside applications are rare, and the reasoning here is a clean statement of what procedural fairness requires of a tribunal.

The dispute was about a cargo of ultra-low sulphur diesel and whether late payment was repudiatory. Both sides had always proceeded on the footing that there was a contractual payment date. The majority decided the case on the basis that there was no agreed date for payment, that the parties' conduct had relieved the buyer of the obligation, and that there was no reason to doubt the buyer's ability to pay the balance. None of those had been pleaded or argued. Pelling J set out, for each, what the claimant would have been bound to submit had it been given the chance, including the entire agreement clause, the absence of any pleaded case on waiver or estoppel, and the terms of the email that suggested the buyer could not in fact pay.

Severance was considered and rejected. The offending findings were the foundation of the award, and deleting them would have left the parties with an award that neither wanted and that none of the arbitrators considered appropriate. There was also a dissent saying the majority had decided an unpleaded case, but the Court resolved the application without regard to it, because the dissent intermingled procedural unfairness with alleged errors of law and fact over which the supervisory court has no jurisdiction. A dissent focused squarely on procedural fairness may assist, one that ranges more widely will not and the recognition order was set aside and the recognition claim dismissed.

[2025] DIFC CFI 029 - (1) EFG (Middle East) Ltd (2) EFG Bank Ltd v (1) Marj Holding Limited (2) Arj Holding Limited (3) Mohammad Ahmad Ramadhan Juma (link). Court: DIFC Court of First Instance. Date: issued 27 July 2026, re-issued 8 September 2026. Judgment of H.E. Justice Roger Stewart. Case number: CFI 029/2025. Hearing: 9 July 2026. Ms Charlotte Bijlani, instructed by Mishcon de Reya, for the Claimants; Ms Adna Musaraj, instructed by Halima Alnaqbi Advocates and Legal Consultants, for the Defendants.

Immediate judgment for a Swiss bank against the borrower under Lombard credit arrangements and against its Hong Kong guarantor under a corporate guarantee capped at USD 12.5m, for EUR 4,218,152.130, USD 135,904.91 and GBP 11,107.90 plus contractual and court-rate interest. The defence ran to 75 pages and took a series of points about corporate identity, enforceability under Swiss and Hong Kong law, and the make-up of the shortfall. None of them survived. The defendants had every opportunity to file substantive evidence in answer and chose not to.

It's worth keeping an eye out for the costs ruling. The claimants sought summary assessment of USD 498,616.46, including 182 partner hours. The judge declined to assess summarily, holding the sums too large and the allocation of hours to tasks impossible to unpick without risk of injustice, ordered detailed assessment instead, and allowed an interim payment of 40% of the claimed lawyers' costs, rounded to USD 240,000. The application itself, he noted, had taken substantially less than half a day. A statement of costs of that size following a short hearing should now expect the same treatment.

CFI 040/2025 - (1) Trafigura Pte Ltd (2) Trafigura India Pvt Ltd v (1) Mr Prateek Gupta (2) Ms Ginni Gupta (link). Court: DIFC Court of First Instance. Date: 9 September 2026. Order with Reasons of H.E. Justice Robert French. Case number: CFI 040/2025.

The DIFC freezing order made by the Court of Appeal on 26 April 2025, a Chabra order against the second defendant restraining dealings with UAE assets up to USD 625,000,000, is continued to 1 February 2027 on varied terms. Note that this is not a worldwide order; the worldwide relief in this litigation is English.

The new notice regime is the substance of it, and that's worth a look. Before any dealing with the Schedule D assets, the second respondent must give the applicants' solicitors 21 days' notice and, at the same time, identify the asset, its estimated value with independent third-party valuation evidence, the intended purchaser, the sale agreements, an itemised breakdown of the intended use of proceeds, and what she or her company is to receive. The order was also varied to require an undertaking from the claimants not to seek to enforce it anywhere outside the UAE without the Court's permission.

Two applications failed and the second defendant's discharge application was dismissed with costs. So was the application for disclosure of the source of the funds paying the defendants' DIFC legal fees. The second defendant was ordered to pay half the costs of the variation application and half the costs of the earlier interim relief application.

CFI 089/2026 - Patton v Pansie (link). Court: DIFC Court of First Instance. Date: 9 September 2026. Order with Reasons of H.E. Justice Roger Stewart. Case number: CFI 089/2026. Parties anonymised.

A bank obtained a default order in the Small Claims Tribunal in June 2018 for AED 149,799.49, having served the claim form by newspaper publication. The defendant applied to set it aside in October 2025, more than seven years later. The SCT judge dismissed the application as hopelessly late.

Stewart J allowed the appeal and set the order aside. The seven-day window in RDC 53.35 runs from service of the order, and the bank had permission to serve the claim form by publication but not the default order, so the window never opened and the application was in time. Beyond that, the delay was the bank's: it took no enforcement step for seven years, never identified any occasion on which the order was brought to the defendant's attention, and had the defendant's correct email address on file while using the wrong one. The matter was remitted to the SCT for determination on the merits, with no order as to costs. The appeal was brought under article 21 of the DIFC Courts Law No. 2 of 2025, which confines SCT appeals to questions of law, miscarriage of justice, procedural fairness and matters provided for under DIFC Laws.

CFI 048/2025 - Alizz Islamic Bank S.A.O.C v Alef Capital B.S.C.(C) (link). Court: DIFC Court of First Instance. Date: 20 August 2026. Order with Reasons of H.E. Justice Rene Le Miere. Case number: CFI 048/2025.

Disclosure: Faisal is instructed for the Claimant in this case, which is due for trial in 2027. What follows is confined to the Court's published order and takes no position on the issues in the proceedings.

A short procedural order with a longer shelf life than its length suggests. The parties could not agree the list of issues for Shari'ah expert evidence in a restricted investment agency dispute. The defendant sought the inclusion of two further issues; the claimant opposed the form in which they were framed. The Court included both, in its own formulation: the Shari'ah principles governing a Wakil's appointment and use of sub-agents in a wakalah bil-istithmar, and those governing the allocation of investment risk, including when a Wakil becomes responsible for investment losses and how Shari'ah distinguishes that responsibility from a guarantee of capital or profit. Costs of the dispute are costs in the case.

Le Miere J restated the boundary clearly: expert evidence is confined to Shari'ah law and applicable AAOIFI standards, while construction of the agreement, findings of fact and the ultimate questions of breach, causation and liability remain for the Court. Care must be taken, he said, that an issue framed for expert determination does not trespass into contractual construction or legal liability. There is now a formulation on record showing how far the DIFC Courts will let such questions go.

New judgments: ADGM

The judgments below are published on the ADGM Courts register. Neutral citations and case numbers are given for retrieval.

[2026] ADGMCFI 0024 - Sowwah Square Investment - Sole Proprietorship L.L.C. v Forever Rose Retail Limited, with [2026] ADGMCFI 0021 - Valeriia Radchenko v Marshel Group Limited & Anor. Court: ADGM Court of First Instance, Real Property Division and Commercial and Civil Division respectively. Dates: 3 September 2026 (Justice Paul Heath KC, ADGMCFI-2025-262, on the papers) and 27 July 2026 (Justice William Stone SBS KC, ADGMCFI-2025-419, heard 22 July 2026). Mr Roman Khodykin of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP for the claimant in Sowwah Square.

Take these two together we suggest, because the ADGM now has a penalty-rule line rather than a single case.

In Radchenko, Stone J gave judgment on a defaulted USD 1.5m loan for AED 6,166,370.83 with 5% simple interest, and enforced the claimant's charge over 94 shares. He rejected the clause in the addendum imposing a penalty of AED 5,000 per day until settlement, applying the Makdessi principle, holding that the claimant's interests were adequately protected by the interest award. He declined to interfere with the contractually agreed interest rate, limiting the Court's intervention to the penalty clause.

Sowwah Square is fuller, though deliberately not the definitive one. Justice Heath KC had refused summary judgment on a late payment fee and a liquidated damages clause for holding over in a Galleria Mall lease, holding the penalty question sufficiently arguable to require a trial. This is that trial, conducted on the papers after the tenant filed no evidence and did not ask to be heard. The judgment records that although Cavendish Square has been applied in the ADGM at least twice, in Alrakban v Webridge Properties LLC and in Radchenko, in neither case was it necessary to explore the parameters of the rule.

Nor were they explored here, and the reason matters in our view. Justice Heath KC decided the penalty issue "on the narrowest approach possible", by reference to the onus of proof, precisely because nobody appeared as a contradictor and it would be inappropriate, whichever way the decision went, to put a stamp of approval on these clauses or to condemn them without contrary argument. Practitioners hoping for an ADGM statement of the outer limits of the penalty rule will have to wait for a contested case (we'll look out for it). What one gets instead is a careful restatement of the Cavendish Square test, reached through section 1(1) of the Application of English Law Regulations 2015 and read alongside Paciocco and 127 Hobson Street Ltd v Honey Bees Preschool Ltd on proportionality.

What the judgment does settle is more probably more practical. The burden of establishing that a clause is a penalty lies on the party attacking it, and a party who contests summary judgment on penalty grounds and then declines to put in evidence at trial should expect to lose and to pay indemnity costs. That is what Forever Rose did, and what it paid. On the unchallenged evidence, clauses of this kind were customary in ADGM commercial leases around August 2018, the two negotiators were commercially experienced, and both corporate parties formed part of a larger sophisticated business enterprise requiring no paternalistic protection. The amounts could not be characterised as out of all proportion, exorbitant or unconscionable.

[2026] ADGMCFI 0022 - AY (as Trustee of the AZ Trust). Court: ADGM Court of First Instance, Commercial and Civil Division. Date: 7 August 2026. Judge: Justice Sir Andrew Smith. Case number: ADGMCFI-2026-265. Anonymised.

The second substantial trust-directions judgment from Sir Andrew Smith in ten weeks, following NX (as Trustee of the EYZ Trust) covered in our last note. The declarations run in four categories. The Court declared a 2022 Deed of Appointment, Retirement and Amendment effective; held that ADGM law governs the trust, including the construction and effect of a 2010 trust deed; confirmed the ADGM Courts as the forum for administration and their jurisdiction over construction and effect; held that the DORA validly amended the trust deed so that the seat of the trust is the ADGM; and confirmed the trustee's appointment as valid. It then held effective three further deeds of amendment, one of which added and removed beneficiaries, together with a disclaimer deed of 2023. Finally, it declared that since the DORA the trustee has been the absolute beneficial owner of the shares in the underlying company, that equitable title is vested in the trustee, and that a second company holds legal title on bare trust and as nominee.

Two such judgments in ten weeks is not a coincidence it seems to us. Families are migrating trust structures into the ADGM and coming to the Court for comfort on the validity of the steps taken. Read together, the two judgments amount to a checklist of what the Court will want to see on such an application. That is worth looking at for off-shore trusts practitioners.

[2026] ADGMCFI 0020 - NMC Specialty Hospital Ltd v OGM Medical Equipment Trading LLC. Court: ADGM Court of First Instance, Commercial and Civil Division. Date: 20 July 2026. Judge: Justice Sir Andrew Smith. Case number: ADGMCFI-2020-020. Hearing: 15 July 2026.

A creditor-facing decision in the NMC estate, under the ADGM Insolvency Regulations 2022. The Court held that the Specialty Hospital deed of company arrangement binds the respondent to the extent of its terms, that the respondent is deemed by those terms to have abandoned its claim in respect of the debt and cannot enforce it, and that the DOCA continued to bind the respondent after 25 March 2022 and remains valid and binding between them. If you hold a claim against a DOCA company and have assumed it survived the arrangement, check the terms.

No ADGM Court of Appeal judgment was published in the period. The most recent remains [2025] ADGMCA 0003.

New judgments: QFC / QICDRC

[2026] QIC (F) 56 - Tamam Capital for Commercial Mediation LLC v Growth Investment Holding LLC and Hamad Mubarak Al Hajri (PDF). Court: QFC Civil and Commercial Court, First Instance Circuit. Date: 7 September 2026. Before Justice Fritz Brand, Justice Tan Sri Nallini Pathmanathan and Justice Dr Talal Al-Emadi. Case number: CTFIC0037/2026. Trial: 23 and 24 August 2026. Mr Thomas Williams KC of Selborne Chambers and Mr Oliver McEntee of Kings Chambers, instructed by International Law Chambers LLC, for the Claimant; Mr Kyle Grootboom of Sharq Law Firm for the Defendants.

The sixth judgment in the Tamam Capital cluster, and the one that decides it. This is the most significant QFC company law decision for some time and it's worth reading in full.

Tamam held 281,897 non-voting Class B shares, 9.04%, in a QFC special purpose vehicle holding investors' interests in the Snoonu group. The second defendant was its sole director, sole Class A voting shareholder, and the founder and chief executive of the underlying operating business. When Jahez announced the acquisition of 75% of a related entity at a company valuation of USD 300m, buying out the Class B shareholders became a necessary intermediate step, and the director set about buying Tamam's shares personally. Tamam was given 24 hours to consider an offer of QAR 24,900,000, then a formal package recording a nominal transfer price of QAR 1, and its repeated requests for the cap table, the proceeds waterfall and the underlying documentation were refused, first on confidentiality grounds and then by reference to the article in the articles of association denying Class B shareholders any right of inspection. Six days after Tamam reported the conduct to the QFC, the director passed a special resolution winding the company up voluntarily. Tamam was not told for five months, and learned of it from the QFC rather than from either defendant.

The Court found unfair prejudice under article 134(1) of the QFC Companies Regulations 2005 on three grounds: the failure to make disclosure sufficient to allow Tamam to assess the value of its shareholding; the timing, non-disclosure and apparent purpose of the voluntary winding-up; and unequal treatment of holders of the same class of shares.

Have a look at the reasoning on the duty of disclosure first. The general rule is that directors owe their duties to the company and not to individual shareholders. The Court held that a limited exception applies where the director is personally the purchaser of a minority shareholder's interest: a duty then arises to disclose facts known to the director and known by him to be unknown to the shareholder which might reasonably and objectively influence the shareholder's judgment on the offer, drawing on Brunninghausen v Glavanics, Coleman v Myers and the "sufficient information" duty discussed in Sharp v Blank. That duty does not depend on any pre-existing relationship of trust. The Court also confirmed, on O'Neill v Phillips, that a disagreement about price will not on its own cross the article 134 threshold, and rejected the submission that this was no more than a valuation dispute.

The Court ordered the director to purchase the shares personally under article 134(2)(B), rather than ordering the company in liquidation to do so, which avoids cutting across the statutory scheme of distribution and leaves the liquidation estate untouched. An independent accountant is to be appointed by the Registrar under article 134(2)(E) to quantify the entitlement, at the director's expense, with the liquidator and the director directed to provide the books and records required. A Dukhan Bank payment guarantee for QAR 30,000,000 continues until the entitlement is determined and satisfied. The director pays Tamam's costs; no order was made against the company given its liquidation.

[2026] QIC (F) 48 - Equiom Corporate Services QFC LLC v Aimia Marketing Doha LLC and others (PDF). Court: QFC Civil and Commercial Court, First Instance Circuit. Date: 21 July 2026. Judge: Justice Tan Sri Nallini Pathmanathan. Case number: CTFIC0038/2026.

A jurisdictional challenge by an individual fourth defendant, resolved cause of action by cause of action rather than as a single question. The Court held that the claims in misrepresentation and negligent misstatement arise from transactions between a QFC entity and a Qatari entity outside the QFC, and so fall within article 8(3)(c)(4) of the QFC Law and article 9.1.1.4 of the Court's Rules. The challenge was dismissed as to those. It was allowed as to the claims in breach of warranty of authority, knowing receipt and unjust enrichment. No order as to costs.

The Court then declined to exercise the article 9.4 discretion to refuse jurisdiction over what remained. The reasoning is practical: the claims against the first defendant were going to proceed before the QFC Court in any event, and declining jurisdiction over the fourth defendant would fragment a single factual matrix across two continents, the other being Canada, where related proceedings against a different party were substantially complete. The lesson for anyone drafting or resisting a QFC jurisdiction challenge is that the analysis runs claim by claim, and that a partial success may be a better target than an all-or-nothing attack.

[2026] QIC (F) 50 - Gulf Insurance Group (Gulf) B.S.C. (C) v AlJaber Engineering W.L.L. (PDF). Court: QFC Civil and Commercial Court, First Instance Circuit. Date: 3 August 2026. Judge: Justice Dr Georges Affaki. Case number: CTFIC0007/2026.

An insurer's claim for unpaid premiums against an insured registered in Qatar but not in the QFC. The jurisdictional challenge was dismissed. On the merits the insurer had mixed success, and the two rulings of general interest pull in opposite directions.

In the insurer's favour, the Court held it entitled to rely on electronic copies of the insurance certificates notwithstanding the non-production of an original policy. Against it, the claim for QAR 314,597.08 in premiums relating to a related company was dismissed. The insurer had asserted that the related company was a branch of the defendant, abandoned that when confronted with a registry extract showing a different incorporation number, and then argued that common shareholders plus a history of payments created a binding obligation. The Court held that some form of third-party undertaking, guarantee or joint liability was required, that no argument had been advanced to pierce the corporate veil, and that an offer to adduce the supporting evidence after the hearing was too late and inadmissible for want of any plausible explanation. The damages claim was dismissed in its entirety and the parties were directed to confer on the quantum of the premiums owed up to 1 September 2024.

Practice Directions, Regulations and Rulebooks

DIFC - Practice Direction No. 1 of 2026, Adjournment of Hearings (link). Signed by H.E. Chief Justice Wayne Martin on 14 July 2026, and published the same day.

Short, and aimed squarely at a habit the Court evidently (and perhaps unsurprisingly) wants to stop. A listed hearing stays listed until the Court orders otherwise, and an agreement between the parties to adjourn does not of itself adjourn anything. Parties must keep preparing until the Court has ruled. Consent requests go to the Registry by letter or email immediately after agreement is reached, copied to the other parties, confirming consent, explaining the reasons, stating the date agreement was reached and proposing alternative dates. Contested requests require an application under the RDC, made immediately upon the circumstances becoming known, explaining the reasons, when they arose and the prejudice said to follow from refusal. Making a request does not suspend compliance with any existing order, direction or timetable.

One drafting wrinkle to be aware of, and it is not academic if you are arguing about which regime applied to a given hearing. The citation clause says the Practice Direction comes into effect on the date of signature, 14 July 2026. Paragraph 6.1 says it comes into force seven days from the date of publishing, which on the same publication date gives 21 July 2026. The two cannot both be right, and the week between them falls inside the period covered by this note.

Peregrine v Palmina (3 September 2026) is an early illustration of the approach in practice, the Court refusing an adjournment for want of consultant medical evidence while vacating the hearing for its own listing reasons.

DIFC - no new legislation. No new DIFC Law, Regulation, Amendment Law or Enactment Notice in the period. Two items remain outstanding from earlier notes: the Enactment Notice for DIFC Laws Amendment Law No. 1 of 2025, and the Regulatory Law Amendment Law, DIFC Law No. 2 of 2025. The latter sits in the DFSA Rulebook under Amendment Laws rather than on the DIFC legal database. The three DIFC consultations of 2026, on the Prescribed Company Regulations, the Arbitration Law and the Data Protection Regulations, have all closed. Let's see what happens.

ADGM - no new Courts Regulations or Court Procedure Rules amendments.

QFC - no new Practice Directions. The published slate remains at thirteen, the most recent being Practice Directions No. 2 and No. 3 of 2026 of 23 June 2026, both covered in our last note.

This note summarises decisions published by the DIFC Courts, the ADGM Courts and the QICDRC between 14 July and 17 September 2026. It is a survey, not advice.