Children Fail in High Court Bid to Halt Enforcement of US$16 Million Judgment Debt against their Mother

In Gupta v Shah & Ors [2026] EWHC 2064 (Ch), Tanfield’s Marc Glover successfully resisted an application for an order that would have prevented enforcement of a judgment debt exceeding US$16 million against the applicants’ mother, the Third Defendant in the action, notwithstanding outstanding costs orders in favour of the applicants; the Fourth and Sixth Defendants.

The decision forms the latest chapter in long-running commercial fraud and trust litigation in which Marc Glover previously obtained substantial success for the Claimants:

• Gupta v Shah & Ors [2023] EWHC 540 (Ch), where Sir Anthony Mann granted a $14M+ summary judgment against the First Defendant (the Third Defendant’s husband and Fourth and Sixth Defendants’ father) and upheld proprietary claims concerning funds misappropriated from the Claimants.  See Tanfield’s previous article here.
• Gupta v Shah & Ors [2024] EWHC 1189 (Ch), where Thompsell J made a debarring order against the Third Defendant and granted a $16M+ final judgment against her, and unless orders concerning the continuing claims against other members of the Shah family including the Fourth and Sixth Defendants.

The High Court held that it would be inappropriate to prevent the Claimants enforcing their judgments against the Third Defendant because costs remained unpaid to the Fourth and Sixth Defendants. The court also attached significance to substantial cross-costs liabilities owed by those defendants to the Claimants and the fact that ordinary costs enforcement mechanisms remained available.

Of wider interest, the judgment contains important observations on the limits of the court’s inherent jurisdiction to make costs-based debarring orders and on the proper scope of Zacaroli J’s (as he then was) decision in Tonstate Group Ltd v Wojakovski [2020] EWHC 1004 (Ch).

Read our detailed briefing note here.