Tag: Jurisdiction

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Maritime pollution: France’s highest court to annul Court of appeal ‘Erika’ judgment on the basis of absence of jurisdiction?

‘Avocat général’ Didier Boccon-Gibod at the French Cour de cassation, issued his opinion on 24  May, in the Erika case. On 12 December 1999 the Erika broke in half 40 miles off the coast of Brittany. More than 10 000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil were spilt, evidently leading to an ecological disaster of serious proportions. As is not unusual in cases with so much at stake, litigation is still ongoing.

Of some relevance in the case at issue (thank you to prof Philippe Delebecque at Sorbonne for pointing that out to me), the injured parties decided to hinge their wagon unto the criminal prosecution. This saves resources, as the bulk of the procedure is left to the prosecution service to pursue. However it has the obvious disadvantage that the injured parties lose some of their hold on the course of the arguments run, and, even more importantly, that the case in the main turns into a criminal prosecution, with an accidental (no pun intended) civil angle to it. Criminal law determines the outcome.

The ‘Avocat général’, to I understand loud criticism, advises the Court to annul the Court of Appeal’s conviction of the defendants (including Total and the classification society, Rina). His grounds for doing so are based on his analysis of relevant international treaties, leading him to conclude that France has no jurisdiction criminally to prosecute oil spills occurring in its exclusive economic zone (even if the consequences were felt firmly on French soil). The ship having Malta as its flag State, Malta should have taking the helm.

It has been pointed out over at the UK human rights blog that it seems awkward that the result of the Opinion, if followed, would be that ‘France cannot prosecute a French-controlled company for devastating French beaches via an oil spill in the French EEZ.’

An excellent summary of the consequences and reasoning may be found here, in French. I do not have a weblink to the Opinion however I do have an E-copy in French – interested readers, just send me a mail.

Geert.

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Of rocks and hard stones for national courts – Villalon AG in Mühlleitner: No need for restrictive approach to the protective jurisdictional grounds for consumers in Brussels I

Villalon AG has opined in Case C-190/11 Mühlleitner [Opinion as yet not available in English].

Article 15 of the Brussels I ‘Jurisdiction’ Regulation, offers protective jurisdictional rules for consumers, provided one or two conditions are met. Article 15(1)(c) [statutory law likes its subdivisions) offers the generic criterion for application:

‘Article 15

1.      In matters relating to a contract concluded by a person, the consumer, for a purpose which can be regarded as being outside his trade or profession, jurisdiction shall be determined by this Section, without prejudice to Article 4 and point 5 of Article 5, if: (…)

(c)      in all other cases, the contract has been concluded with a person who pursues commercial or professional activities in the Member State of the consumer’s domicile or, by any means, directs such activities to that Member State or to several States including that Member State, and the contract falls within the scope of such activities.’

In Pammer /Alpenhof,   Alpenhof had argued amongst others that that its contract with the consumer is concluded on the spot and not at a distance, as the room keys are handed over and payment is made on the spot, and that accordingly Article 15(1)(c) of Regulation No 44/2001 cannot apply. The Court of Justice had answered this with the very paragraph which has now tempted the Oberster Gerichtshof – Austria, into the preliminary review, para 87:

‘ In that regard, the fact that the keys are handed over to the consumer and that payment is made by him in the Member State in which the trader is established does not prevent that provision from applying if the reservation was made and confirmed at a distance, so that the consumer became contractually bound at a distance.’

This paragraph seemed to suggest ‘at a distance’ as the trigger for the application of Article 15(1)(c) which in turn led to the preliminary question:

Does the application of Article 15(1)(c) [   ] presuppose that the contract between the consumer and the undertaking has been concluded at a distance?

Villalon AG replied on 24 May, making specific reference to the history of Article 15, in particular with reference to the old text, under the Brussels Convention. That old provision seemed to imply that where the consumer’s contracting party had encouraged him to leave his Member State of domicile so as to conclude the contract elsewhere, the consumer could not make recourse to the protective regime. Other changes to the relevant title, too, suggested if anything that Council and Commission’s intention with the new provisions was definitely not to limit their scope of application: had they intended to do so, the AG suggests, the Institutions would have limited Article 15’s scope to contracts concluded at a distance. Court of Justice case-law hints at the same need for a wide approach [in particular, Ilsinger, where the Court of Justice held that the scope of Article 15(1)(c) appears ‘to be no longer being limited to those situations in which the parties have assumed reciprocal obligations.’]

The AG concludes with the suggestion that the reference to ‘distance’ in para 87 of Alpenhof refers to a factual circumstance, rather than a condition for application.

To many the conclusion may seem obvious, and the issue covered by acte clair (meaning the national court could have referred to the arguably obvious meaning of the provision, not to have to refer to the Court of Justice). In particular, the COJ has repeatedly emphasised the relevance of the consumer title in the Jurisdiction Regulation. On the other hand, however, the same Court has been quite anxious to give national courts detailled and specific instructions on the application of tiny details in the Regulation, making application of the acte clair doctrine quite difficult: many things one thought were clear, have been answered by the Court in unexpected ways.

National courts therefore are caught between the proverbial rock and the hard stone. Either they refer profusely, thereby feeding the cycle of micromanagement. Or they make extended use of acte clair, thereby risking unequal application of the Regulation (and potentially European Commission irk). On the issue of Article 15(1)(c) at least, the former would seem to prevail: in Slot, Case C-98/12 (hitherto still pending), the German Bundesgerichtshof has asked essentially the same question.

Geert.

 
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‘Exorbitant’ head of jurisdiction of Article 14 Code Civil (France) is not unconstitutional. Probably.

On 29 February last, the French Cour de Cassation decided not to grant leave for the constitutionality (or not) of Article 14 of the French Code Civil to be reviewed by the French Constitutional Court. Article 14 is an ‘exorbitant’ rule of jurisdiction. These are jurisdictional grounds in national law which rest on very weak of even spurious grounds, and which by virtue of Articles 3 and 4 of the Brussels I Regulation may not be invoked against those domiciled in one of the EU Member States. However they do regain full force as against those not domiciled in any of the EU Member States.

Article 14 Code Civil grants jurisdiction in civil cases to French courts, on the simple ground that plaintiff be a French national. A similarish provision in French criminal law was recently and famously invoked (but failed) in the prof Joseph Weiler litigation (French version here and unofficial English translation here).

The alleged unconstitutionality lies in the perceived ‘unfairness’ of such trials vis-a-vis the (non French, indeed by virtue of the Brussels I Regulation the non EU) defendants. The Cour de Cassation saw no merits in the arguments, arguably mostly on the ground of the diminishing practical impact of the provision. The Cour’s decision means that for the time being at least , the issue will not be sub judice in the French Constitutional  Court, however that does not mean of course that it might not end up at the European Court of Human Rights before long.

Geert.

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The Jurisdiction Regulation, trademarks and the internet – The Court of Justice in Wintersteiger

I have already reported recently on the application of the Brussels I Regulation and the internet [see here for my confused state on the Judgment in ‘G’]. In Wintersteiger (Judgment of 19 April 2012) the applicant is the proprietor of an Austrian trade mark. The defendant was a competitor established in Germany, who had registered Wintersteiger’s name as an AdWord on Google’s German search service. Whence users of google.de entering ‘Wintersteiger’ (looking for that make’s ski and snowboarding service tools) receive a link to Wintersteiger’s website as first search result, but also as the first AdLink on the right hand side of the screen, an advert for and link to the competitor’s website – which Wintersteiger considered an abuse of its trademark.

The case once again raised the question how one applies Article 5(3)’s ‘place where the harmful event occurred’ (since Mines de Potasse split in ‘place where the event giving rise to the damage’ and ‘place where the damage’ occurred as being two alternative connecting factors)  in an internet context.

The judgment of the Court of Justice confirms that the connecting factor ‘centre of interests’ in Kylie Minogue and eDate Advertising only holds for infringement of personality rights in an internet context. Trademark violation is distinguished, on the grounds that rebus sic stantibus intellectual property rights are protected on a territorial basis. The Court confines the ‘place where the damage occurred’ as the Member State in which the trade mark is registered. For the ‘place where the event giving rise to the damage’, the Court upheld ‘place of establishment of the advertiser’ as the jurisdictional basis (the Advocate General’s ‘means necessary for producing, a priori, an actual infringement of a trade mark in another Member State’ is a  more generic criterion however the Court did not uphold this as such).

Precedent value of the judgment may be limited due to the specific facts of the case and the questions put to the Court (for non-EU readers: the Court of Justice practises judicial economy, hence questions not specifically asked are not entertained). In particular, the conclusion may only hold absolutely where there is only one trade mark held, in only one Member State (for EU readers and non-EU readers alike: EU trademark protection is a lot less harmonised than one may have assumed). The referring court moreover did not flag the many issues surrounding provisionary measures and intellectual property rights (see Article 31 of the Regulation and the Opinion of the same AG in Solvay, on which I report here).

Geert.

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G v Cornelius de Visser. The Court of Justice on tort, internet and the Jurisdiction Regulation

Applying private international law in the information society is a touch tricky. Traditional PIL having relied on territorial links, applying it in an internet context may sometimes be testing. Article 5(3) of the European ‘Jurisdiction Regulation’ is a special jurisdictional rule which allows plaintiff to sue elsewhere than in the domicile of the defendant, for actions based on tort. In eDate advertising (aka Kylie Minogue), the European Court of Justice fine-tuned the Shevill criteria for application of Article 5(3) JR in an internet context, adding the ‘centre of (the victim’s) interests’  as a potential forum in the case of infringement of one’s personality rights. [see here]

In G v Cornelius de Visser, Case C-292/10, the Court was asked to provide input in the event of the defendant’s domicile being unknown (but with the defendant presumed to be an EU citisen), and the precise location of the server on which the website is stored, also unknown, although most probably in EU territory.

The Landgericht Regensburg asked no fewer than 11 questions of some complexity, with a degree of interdependence between them. The Court answered that Article 5(3) may certainly apply in such case, giving preference to legal certainty. However it expects due diligence on behalf of the national courts in making sure that a prima facie case of a link to the EU was established.

The ECJ failed subsequently to entertain the questions on the location of the harmful event given the uncertainty signalled above, for the relevant questions had been dropped by the referring court following the judgment in eDate Advertising. In my view, an answer to some of the now dropped questions on location of the harmful event (the locus delicti commissi) were certainly not nugatory, even after eDate Advertising. There is no Opinion of the Advocate General to assist.

Judgment in ‘G’

Geert.

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