【Case Study】

The Philippine Admiral,the vessel,was owned by the Philippine government,and had writs issued against it in Hong Kong by two shipping corporations.In May 1973 P (a Hong Kong Shipping Company) brought actions in the Supreme Court of Hong Kong against the Ship (Philippine Admiral) for goods supplied and disbursements made for the ship.The writ was served on L.When the government of the Republic of the Philippines heard of the actions against the Ship,it applied to the court for the proceedings be set aside on the ground that the ship,the property of the government was entitled to sovereign immunity.

The Privy Council,hearing the case on appeal from the Supreme Court of Hong Kong,reviewed previous decisions on sovereign immunity and concluded that it would not follow the Porto Alexandre case.Lord Cross gave four reasons for not following the earlier case.First,the Court of Appeal wrongly felt that they were bound by the Parlement Belge decision.Second,the House of Lords in The Cristina had been divided on the issue of immunity for state-owned vessels engaged in commerce.Third,the trend of opinion was against the absolute immunity doctrine; and fourth it was “wrong” to apply the doctrine since states could in the Western world be sued in their own courts on commercial contracts and there was no reason why foreign states should not be equally liable to be sued.Thus,the Privy Council held that in cases where a state-owned merchant ship involved in ordinary trade was the object of a writ,it would not be entitled to sovereign immunity and the litigation would proceed.(https://www.daowen.com)

The decision of this case marked that Britain switched its position on the immunities of states and their property from “the Absolute Doctrine” to “the Restrictive Doctrine.”