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Silence is, er, aluminium

28 September 2012

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It was a legal battle that promised to lay bare the skeletons of Russia’s underworld and give the world a fascinating insight into the former Soviet Union’s bloody aluminium wars.

Alas, the glare of the court’s eye was shut out yesterday as Michael Cherney settled his $1bn (£650m) claim against Oleg Deripaska, bringing an end to one of the largest cases of the year (27 September 2012).

Whether that means Quinn Emannuel Urquhart & Sullivan partner Sue Prevezer QC was quaffing champagne with the rest of Deripaska’s legal team - Blackstone Chambers’ Thomas Beazley QC and One Essex Court’s Alain Choo Choy QC - in Sloane Square last night is another matter.

All we know - so far - is that Deripaska’s spokesman in Moscow released a terse statement yesterday declaring: “Neither party will be making any further comment in relation to the litigation or matters raised therein.”

This probably isn’t what Thoreau had in mind when he wrote “silence alone is worthy to be heard”. But it’s a nice fit.

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Readers' comments (1)

  • Anonymous | 3-Oct-2012 1:54 pm

    This settlement is meant to be confidential. So why is an attempt being made to pass on information about champagne drinking, perhaps supplied by Quinn Emanuel themselves, to suggest that their client won handsomely. And why was the other side's written statement – something which both parties obviously agreed as a neutral "no comment" – suddenly become "terse". We don't need to see self-serving PR attempts at aggrandisement, and we certainly don't need journalists falling over themselves at the drop of a hat to be taken in by such things. What is surreal about the widely different approaches that these two sides appear to have taken for PR purposes is that it is already fairly well known through loose (perhaps champagne induced) talk that QE's client got out of this by paying a substantial amount to his opponent. That's the real story. Not self-serving nonsense about drinking champagne.

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