Information gathering, enforcement and jurisdiction: Lessons from Zaya Living

Dubai's dual-court system is one of the defining features of its legal landscape.

Alongside the Dubai Courts, the DIFC Courts operate as an independent common law judiciary with its own legislative and procedural regime. The interaction between these two systems has generated a substantial body of jurisprudence, particularly in relation to the recognition, enforcement, and execution of judgments.

In the early years of the DIFC Courts, much of the litigation focused on whether judgments issued by one court could be recognised and enforced by the other. As those questions became increasingly settled, attention has shifted to a different set of issues: not whether a judgment can be enforced, but how enforcement should be conducted, which court should supervise the process, and where the limits of each court's powers lie. These issues are particularly important because successful enforcement rarely depends on the judgment alone. It requires locating assets, obtaining information about the judgment debtor's affairs, and identifying the most effective forum through which execution can be pursued. Enforcement strategy has therefore become an integral component of commercial litigation rather than a mere post-judgment consideration.

Dubai's legislative framework contemplates cooperation between the Dubai Courts and the DIFC Courts. Each court retains jurisdiction within its own statutory sphere while legislative mechanisms permit one court to seek the assistance of the other where enforcement measures are required outside its own jurisdiction. Yet cooperation does not mean concurrent authority over every aspect of the enforcement process. The powers exercised by each court remain subject to carefully defined jurisdictional limits. The significance of those limits is particularly evident in the context of information-gathering powers. Modern enforcement regimes recognise that a judgment is often only as valuable as a creditor's ability to identify assets against which it can be executed. Consequently, courts are frequently empowered to compel the disclosure of documents, require debtors or company officers to attend examinations and obtain information concerning assets capable of satisfying a judgment.

The DIFC Courts provide one such mechanism through Part 50 of the Rules of the DIFC Courts ("RDC"). Part 50 enables the Court to require disclosure of documents and to examine judgment debtors, officers and other relevant persons concerning assets available for execution. Similar procedures exist in many leading common law jurisdictions and reflect the reality that transparency is often a prerequisite to effective enforcement.

The availability of these powers, however, raises an important jurisdictional question. Can information-gathering powers be exercised wherever useful to a judgment creditor, or are they limited by the court's underlying enforcement jurisdiction? More fundamentally, can procedural powers expand a court's execution jurisdiction, or must they remain ancillary to the enforcement proceedings they are intended to support?

These questions came before the Conflict of Jurisdiction Tribunal (CJT) in Application No. 4 of 2026, Zaya Living Real Estate Development LLC v China State Construction Engineering Corporation.

The CJT occupies a unique position within Dubai's judicial architecture. Its role is not to determine the merits of a dispute, but to resolve jurisdictional conflicts between the Dubai Courts and the DIFC Courts. In doing so, it performs an important constitutional function, ensuring that the boundaries between the two systems remain clear and that parallel proceedings do not undermine legal certainty.

In Zaya Living, the judgment creditor had obtained a judgment before the Dubai Courts and commenced execution proceedings before the Dubai Execution Court. During those proceedings, an application seeking the examination of the judgment debtor's former manager regarding the company's assets was rejected by the Execution Judge. The creditor subsequently sought relief under RDC Part 50 before the DIFC Courts, obtaining orders for disclosure and examination relating to assets both inside and outside the DIFC. On appeal, the DIFC Court of Appeal restored broader disclosure orders extending beyond assets located within the DIFC itself.

The dispute was then referred to the CJT. The CJT expressly stated that it was not reviewing the correctness of the DIFC Court of Appeal’s judgment. The central issue was not the existence of the DIFC Court's information-gathering powers, but whether those powers could be exercised in circumstances where execution proceedings were already being conducted before the Dubai Courts. The CJT concluded that execution measures relating to assets outside the DIFC fell within the jurisdiction of the Dubai Courts, given that execution proceedings had already been commenced before the Dubai Execution Court. At the same time, it recognised that the DIFC Courts retained jurisdiction over enforcement measures relating to assets situated within the DIFC or otherwise falling within the DIFC Courts' jurisdiction.

The importance of the decision lies not merely in its treatment of RDC Part 50, but in the broader principle it affirms. The CJT implicitly rejected the distinction drawn by the DIFC Court of Appeal between information gathering and execution. The Court of Appeal had treated Part 50 as a standalone procedural mechanism capable of operating independently of the court supervising execution. By contrast, the CJT effectively recognised that information-gathering powers are not freestanding remedies. They are ancillary tools within the enforcement process and derive their legitimacy from the court's jurisdiction over that process. A creditor cannot invoke a procedural mechanism before one court simply to overcome limitations that arise from the fact that execution is being supervised elsewhere.

Viewed through that lens, Zaya Living represents a significant development in Dubai enforcement jurisprudence. Earlier cases focused largely on whether judgments could move between the two court systems. The present decision addresses a more sophisticated question: once enforcement has begun, how should judicial authority be allocated between the courts responsible for supervising it?

The decision also serves as a practical reminder for litigants and advisers. Enforcement strategy must be considered holistically. The availability of a powerful procedural mechanism is only one part of the analysis. Equal consideration must be given to the court supervising execution, the location of assets, the statutory basis for enforcement and the limits of judicial cooperation between the two systems. Procedural advantages cannot, by themselves, displace jurisdictional boundaries established by law.

More broadly, the decision illustrates the increasing maturity of Dubai's dual-court framework. The relationship between the Dubai Courts and the DIFC Courts is now less concerned with questions of institutional competition and more focused on the orderly allocation of judicial responsibility. Each court performs a distinct role within a coordinated enforcement regime, and the effectiveness of that regime depends upon maintaining clear jurisdictional boundaries.

The CJT’s decision therefore does more than clarify the scope of RDC Part 50. It reaffirms a fundamental principle of Dubai's enforcement framework: information-gathering powers may facilitate execution, but they cannot determine who controls it. Ultimately, procedural tools remain subordinate to the jurisdictional structure within which they operate, ensuring that enforcement across Dubai's dual-court system remains both effective and coherent.