The registration at the Ministry of Economy (the MOE) of a range of reseller, distribution, agency and franchise agreements with local agents, is commonplace in the UAE, see our previous article here for more information. However, it is not commonplace in the UAE for an agency agreement to be de-registered. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court in Abu Dhabi recently issued a final judgment confirming the favourable Court of Appeal decision to de-register the agency. This dispute has been running for over five years and our Dispute Resolution team successfully argued that the agent breached the agency agreement when it pursued orders outside the territory specified in the terms of the agreement. This position was confirmed by the expert report and subsequently considered by the Supreme Court to be a fundamental violation of the agency agreement’s terms and therefore terminable under Article 8 of the Commercial Agencies Law. This was a significant result for our client and is a very limited example of the courts de-registering an agency agreement, which is notoriously difficult to achieve. A number of our Disputes Resolution team were involved in this complex matter, including Abdulrahman Juma, Khalid El Derderi, Mohammed Al Dhaheri, Karim Mahmoud and Ayman Diab.
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