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Choosing the right venue for resolving a dispute is crucial. But when does the established principle of ‘plaintiff’s choice’ degenerate into the much-maligned practice of ‘forum shopping’?

There is a large disparity between India’s courts in terms of their quality, speed, resources, reputations and specialist expertise. It is no surprise, therefore, that clients and their legal advisers regularly pick and choose between venues, depending on the nature of the dispute and their objectives for resolving it.

“I would go to a forum that is favourable to me, and there is nothing wrong with that,” says Huzefa Nasikwala, a partner at Juris Corp.

 

Such a practice, he notes, is not the same as “forum shopping” – choosing a favourable venue in which to file a suit, such as one with a reputation for granting large awards, at the cost of fairness to the opponent, or taking the same suit to multiple jurisdictions and settling on the one that schedules a preferred judge to hear the matter.

Himanshu Chahar, an associate at LexCounsel in New Delhi, explains that forum shopping involves plaintiffs picking a particular court that may have a positive impact on their case, “to the detriment of the defendant”. As such, he says, “the practice of forum shopping perceptibly goes against the very object of ‘equality before law’.”

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