Dua Associates has a respected, experienced and truly pan-Asia dispute resolution practice that provides a full suite of contentious services. In particular, the team is adept at complex and high-stakes disputes involving the environment, constitutional and administrative laws, contracts, white-collar and regulatory matters, intellectual property, international trade, and corporate and commercial litigations. New areas of focus for the group include trademark litigation and contentious insolvency. The team is active daily before various judicial and arbitral forums in India, including state courts, the Supreme Court and numerous judicial and quasi-judicial tribunals. The group itself comprises more than 100 lawyers spread out across India, located in offices in New Delhi, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune.
The group recently added China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products, Shandong Lingong Construction Machinery, Volvo CE India Private, Wanhua Chemical Group, and Kempar Energy as new clients.
A unique feature of the firm is that it has a robust and dedicated Supreme Court presence through Dua Associates AoR, a firm of Advocates-on-Record (AoR) registered with the Supreme Court. The present AoR of the firm form the bulwark of the Supreme Court practice, ably supported by other partners who appear as well as assist senior counsels with their teams. The AoR firm is based in Delhi and the other seven offices of Dua Associates are in complete sync with this Supreme Court practice.
Senior solicitor and partner Shiraz Patodia is a key figure on the disputes team. The sizeable practice features 16 other partners, including Rajdeep Panda, Angad Varma, Ashish Singh, Juhi Chawla, Divya Sharma, Mayank Singhal, LK Bhushan, Amit Dhingra and insolvency specialist Chitranshul Sinha.
In a landmark matter, Dua Associates represented Dow Chemical in an extremely complex and long-running litigation before the Supreme Court. The dispute emanated from a toxic industrial disaster that occurred in Bhopal in 1984 wherein the Union of India and certain NGOs sought enhanced compensation by filing a curative petition. The decision of the Supreme Court was seminal as it covered within its ambit the aspects that relate to the scope and maintainability of a ‘curative petition’. The matter is of great importance, as the Supreme Court opined on the adequacy of the settlement fund in a mass (environmental) tort action while examining the conspectus of Article 142 for seeking reopening of a settlement. The Constitution Bench concluded that a case for grant of additional compensation over and above the settlement amount, which was found to be sufficient, was not made out by Union of India.
A recent success saw the firm act for Commercial Bank of Dubai to initiate multiple proceedings against the individual personal guarantor in aid of substantive recovery proceedings pending in the UAE. The firm represented the bank and obtained an ex parte interim injunction restraining the personal guarantor from alienating his properties which were known, and also obtained a worldwide freezing orders against unknown properties too. The subject matter of the dispute is one of a kind where the Supreme Court recognised the rights of a foreign creditor in India during pendency of the recovery proceedings in another justification and in aid of such rights.
The team represented APRN Enterprises before the National Company Law Tribunal in a high value insolvency proceeding against Sahara India Medical Institute.
