## Facts

- A Chilean copper enterprise operating the El Teniente mine was reorganized in the late 1960s as a mixed-ownership company, with Chile’s state copper entity (CODELCO) scheduled to acquire a controlling stake over time.
- In 1971, Chile nationalized major copper enterprises by constitutional amendment and implementing measures and applied a compensation approach that, for this enterprise’s former foreign owners, resulted in no compensation being payable.
- After nationalization, the former foreign owners caused a separate entity with the same name to be established abroad as a “split company” to pursue claimed rights outside Chile.
- A cargo of copper originating from the El Teniente mine was shipped to Hamburg and consigned to A.G. Norddeutsche Affinerie for processing.
- The split company sought provisional relief in Germany to secure and recover the copper as property or proceeds allegedly still owed to it notwithstanding nationalization.
- A Hamburg court initially granted an ex parte interim injunction requiring delivery of the copper to a court officer for sequestration or permitting seizure.
- Norddeutsche objected to the injunction, and CODELCO intervened in support of Norddeutsche.

## Issues

1. Whether, for purposes of a dispute in Germany, Chile’s nationalization measures should be denied recognition as contrary to international law or German public policy due to alleged discriminatory taking and lack of compensation.
2. Whether Chile’s expropriation could be given effect in Germany with respect to asserted rights to copper located in Germany and claimed through a post-expropriation “split company.”
3. Whether the requirements for an interim injunction under German procedure—credible showing of the asserted right and urgency—were satisfied.

## Decision

- The court set aside the earlier interim injunction and denied its continuation.
- The court ordered the plaintiff to bear the costs, including costs arising from CODELCO’s intervention.
- The court treated Chile’s nationalization measures as having legal effect on the claimant’s asserted rights derived from the expropriated enterprise and declined, on the record before it, to disregard those measures on public-policy grounds.
- Because the claimant’s right to the copper was not shown with sufficient probability, provisional seizure in Germany was not justified.

## Legal Principles

- Foreign expropriation measures are generally given effect as to rights and assets governed by the expropriating state’s law; recognition may be refused only where nonrecognition is required by the forum’s fundamental public policy in a clear and serious case.
- Allegations that an expropriation violated international law (including claimed lack of adequate compensation) do not, without more and without sufficient certainty, require a third-state court to treat the foreign measures as void in domestic proceedings.
- A post-expropriation “split company” asserting rights abroad must show an independent, enforceable entitlement not merely derivative of the expropriated entity’s extinguished rights.
- Interim injunctive relief requires a sufficiently credible showing of the underlying right and cannot rest on contested, complex merits questions that cannot be reliably resolved in summary proceedings.

## Conclusion

The Hamburg court vacated the interim sequestration of copper in Germany because the claimant failed to demonstrate a sufficiently probable right to the cargo in light of Chile’s nationalization measures, which the court was not prepared to disregard as plainly unlawful or contrary to German public policy in provisional proceedings.


Sociedad Minera el Teniente S.A. v. A.G. Norddeutsche Affinerie, 12 Int’l Legal Materials 251 (Landgericht Hamburg 1973)