IBA Litigation Committee rally: from Vienna to Seoul - Litigation Committee newsletter article, April 2020
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Keith Oliver
Peters & Peters, London
It started as a throwaway comment in September 2014. My Partner Michael O’Kane mused out loud to Matt Denney (who has since become a litigation funder) that it might be fun to drive to Vienna for the IBA Annual Conference a year later in September 2015. Little did we realise the impetus that such a thought might provoke. Cynics might impolitely describe the pastime as Top Gear for lawyers but there is a serious point I suggest, namely a group of great friends, colleagues, practitioners and internationalists to enjoy each other’s company driving through wonderful scenery on some of the best driving routes in the world engaging in stimulating intellectual discussion about the Rule of Law, international enforcement of judgments – and the sound of their exhausts!
The Vienna trip in 2015 was soon followed by the Pacific Highway from San Francisco to Los Angeles. A spectacular group of Ford Mustangs (sadly only V6s) and the odd Camaro punctuated by a convertible 911 were gathered outside the Fairmont Hotel as the half-yearly litigation event concluded but were completely upstaged by the 1960s Mustang secured by one Daan Scheurleer. Daan’s pleasure shared by his co-pilot Yvette Borrius was relatively short lived as his (eat your heart out Steve McQueen) ‘pony’ came to a stuttering halt at the world famous and incredibly tacky (trust me!) Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, but Daan was luckily able via the specialist provider to secure a replacement for the rest of the drive to LA (a 289 cubic inches V8 no less!). Message to self: ’60s cars have poor braking and are truly rotten going around corners, though they do look mega cool.
The exuberance of the Pacific Highway drive was matched, indeed surpassed I respectively suggest, by the road trip to Rome in 2018. A fine collection of mainly Porsches interspersed with Ferraris beautifully driven and stylishly guiding our way courtesy of John Reynolds and the aforementioned Daan headed from Geneva with spectacular moments and memories of a kind that those of us who participated will never forget. For the environmentalists among you, rest assured that the future of the earth was secured by Ilya Nikiforov in his Tesla which purred all the way from St Petersburg to meet us and enjoy the pleasures of the IBA Litigation Committee Italian Job, 2018 style.
The Half Year Berlin event produced a mini group who undertook a tour of what was formerly East Germany in a demonstration of the German engineering including a very slow Mercedes diesel convertible encouraged by Graham Hain and a less than impressive BMW Z4 driven by yours truly that limped along behind the others with a very weak two litre engine. Star of the show, however, was Professor Wolfgang Spoerr who came along in one of his collection pieces – a stunningly beautiful Mercedes 450 in gold. Wolfgang will be ever known by his new nickname ‘Gold Member’.
Now all roads lead from Berlin not to Rome, but of course to Seoul in South Korea. Those of our group who previously had driven from Amsterdam (Daan and Jack Berk) faced the impossible challenge of taking their own brace of Porsches to Asia for this purpose and a splinter group lead by Graham with a masterful route undertook our own version of Top Gear in reasonably priced Kias and Hyundais. The pictures attached say it all, have you ever seen such a fine group of international lawyers looking, with respect to us all, like Uber drivers. The three Kia Avantes and the Hyundai Sonata (to misquote Henry Ford) ‘you can have any colour you like as long as it is white’ undertook a spectacular drive to the demilitarised zone and miraculously reached a top speed of 80 kilometres per hour. Yes the cars in aggregate had a collective BHP than less than either of the aforementioned Ferraris but the drive was littered – and you think that London roads are bad – with speed cameras at almost every junction keeping speed down and obviously intended to serve as a motoring/criminal law impediment to Kim Jong Un should he ever plan to head south and see. Mercifully all was quiet on the DMZ front and, joking aside, the impact of the border and of the museum and the stories that one read of the continuing suffering of the Korean people is something that will stay with all of us for many years to come.
The intrepid group on the reasonably priced DMZ drive were respectively Graham, Anthony Maton, Lesley Hannah, John Bramhall, Alexander Troller, Gabriel Lansky, Tomislav Sunjka and Mara Okmazic with Jack sadly delayed by a boarding pass issue (not issued in fact) at Frankfurt. He and I had a mini group hug ‘a deux’ randomly on the final day of the trip at a motorway junction under a bridge! The other members of the Petrol Heads of Law Group so aptly named by Daan were there in spirit and will very soon be added into our next adventure which – and please each of the readers secure the space in your diary – will be a round Florida trip – including the Keys immediately prior to this year’s IBA Annual Conference in Miami.
So ladies and gentlemen, charge your batteries, rev those engines, secure a decent supply of lithium batteries if you are green, because the Litigation Committee tour of Florida 2020 will soon be starting at a kick-off point near you namely Miami, Tampa or Orlando (to be determined). All interested please notify Daan, Graham or myself before the next summer solstice. And don’t give up on the pleasure of driving just yet. There’s still life in pistons and rocket fuel!
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