English law is custom-built for manufacturers
Joanna Fulton, Partner at Burness Paull, discusses why English law is tailor-made for firms manufacturing and selling their products globally.
Commerce these days increasingly involves cross-border relationships, with extended international supply chains the norm for many manufacturing businesses.
Whether it is pharmaceuticals, medical devices, consumer goods, automotive or technology items — if things don’t quite go to plan it can result in complex and potentially costly issues such as product recalls.
Food manufacturing is a case in point. The horsemeat scandal that engulfed supermarkets and their suppliers in 2013 exposed the complicated role of the vast array of companies in different countries involved in the route from farm to fork. The ensuing crisis wiped millions off the value of companies at all levels of the supply chain, and damaged the reputation of those implicated no matter which country they were based in.
That is why it is crucial that people and organisations within a supply chain understand their rights and obligations, and that any issues can be resolved on a mutually agreed basis.
English law is often the preferred option, and it’s easy to see why.
It ‘does what it says on the tin’ — the words mean what they say and it is the ‘lingua franca’ of international business which gives predictability to the choices that commercial parties are made.
It recognises the right of businesses to agree with each other what they want and to be bound by that — English law will not generally interfere with that essential freedom of contract between those on an equal footing.
Choosing English law means access to the leading expertise of the UK-based legal sector, with highly-experienced and specialised lawyers operating at the top of their game on complex commercial issues.
These can regularly include:
• Access to funding
• Workforce issues
• Exporting and expanding business abroad
• Health and environment-focused legislation and regulation
• Competitive pressures on pricing
• Product safety and quality issues
Expert guidance for manufacturers can also take the form of legal advice on corporate acquisitions; supply, licensing and distribution agreements; brand protection; product liability claim; franchising; and competition investigations.
In these situations, English law provides certainty and transparency of outcome — its principles have been established and developed over many hundreds of years, and can be easily understood and accessed.
Those principles are well recognised and indeed mirrored in many other countries across the globe whose law is derived from English law. As a result, English law remains of persuasive authority in the courts of many other countries.
In summary, English law is tailor-made for those manufacturing and selling their products globally.
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