Facts
By application dated 21 August 2000, A. Ltd, a company under Bahamian law with its registered office in the Bahamas, sued X. and Y. before the Civil Court of the Cantonal Tribunal of the Canton of Vaud for payment of a sum of 1,047,480 Swiss francs. The defendants filed an incidental request for the applicant A. Ltd, which had been struck off the commercial register of the Bahamas on 10 April 2003, to be dismissed from the proceedings on the grounds that it had lost its status as a party.
The investigating judge of the Civil Court dismissed the request for dismissal of the proceedings, a decision confirmed by the Appeals Chamber of the Cantonal Tribunal. The defendants then appealed to the Federal Tribunal, concluding that this judgment should be reformed in the sense that the applicant A. Ltd should be dismissed from the proceedings.
Considerations
The Federal Tribunal examines its jurisdiction ex officio and freely, as well as the admissibility of the appeals submitted to it. It considers that the contested judgment, which dismisses the defendants' incidental request, does not put an end to the proceedings and is therefore a prejudicial or incidental decision.
According to the case law, an immediate appeal against such a decision is only open if it can cause irreparable harm or if its admission can immediately lead to a final decision avoiding a lengthy and costly evidentiary procedure.
In…