It was also accepted, in principle at least, that, if the foreign court would withhold justice from a litigant for openly disgraceful reasons, the court would not stay the English proceedings and so condone an injustice to be perpetrated in the foreign natural forum. But, aside from egregious examples where the facts needed no commentary,2 the courts had gone out of their way to discourage litigants who, having no other cards to play, sought to resist a stay or to obtain permission to serve out on the basis that the relevant foreign jurisdiction was dreadful and not to be trusted. Never mind that litigants thought that they could show that they would suffer injustice at the hands of a foreign judiciary which was biddable, bribeable or just plain bad. The public interest would not be served by encouraging litigants to ask the English court to find and to rule that the foreign court could not be relied on to do justice. Clear and cogent evidence would be demanded,3 and this standard would certainly not be met by exhibiting newspaper clippings and “reports” from bodies which had assumed grand-sounding names like Transparency International or the Human Rights Institute.