Miliangoss Case Study

Miliangos Case
Miliangos was a suit brought in England by an unpaid seller of goods. It was an action for price,, which had been expressed in the contract as an amount in Swiss francs. In its original claim the seller had asked for judgment in English pounds, calculated by reference to the sterling equivalent of the price in Swiss francs at the date that payments should have been made. That is, initially the plaintiff advanced a claim in complete accordance with what was then understood to be the mandatory approach in English courts, the forum-currency/breach-date rule. However, because of doubts cast upon the wisdom and scope of this rule after the drafting of its claim but before the matter came on for hearing- in particular, the decision of the Court of Appeal in Schorsch Meier came out and the plaintiff amended its claim and requested judgment expressed in Swiss francs in the amount of the stated price of the goods. The plaintiff’s incentive to alter its pleadings in this fashion is easily understood: In the period between the breach of contract and start of the trial the Swiss franc had appreciated considerably in relation to the …show more content…
Consequence of Miliangos case in judicial development saw the expansion of the judgment to other types of claims involved refinements to the rule that entailed choices that did not have to be made in Miliangos. In addition to the question of whether the Miliangos payment-date rule operated beyond actions in debt there was a further question: whether the new rule should be confined to cases where the proper law of contract was that of some foreign country, as it was in Miliangos, or extended to those governed by English law. A related concerned was now that a court had the authority to assess damages in some foreign currency, what was the triggering factor- that is, what facts or features of a dispute indicate when a court might take this