Views
Patience is a virtue – The third party effects of assignments in European Private International Law
Written by Leonhard Huebner, Institute for Comparative Law, Conflict of Laws and International Business Law (Heidelberg University)
The third-party effects of the assignment are one of the “most discussed questions of international contract law” as it concerns the “most important gap of the Rome I Regulation”. This gap is regrettable not only for dogmatic reasons, but above all for practical reasons. The factoring industry has provided more than 217 billion euros of working capital to finance more than 200,000 companies in the EU in 2017 alone. After a long struggle in March of 2018, the European Commission, therefore, published a corresponding draft regulation (COM(2018)0096; in the following Draft Regulation). Based on a recent article (ZEuP 2019, 41) the following post explores whether the Draft Regulation creates the necessary legal certainty in this economically important area of law and thus contributes to the further development of European private international law (see also this post by Robert Freitag). Read more
Belgian Court of Cassation and Ryanair’s forum clauses
On 8 February 2019 the Belgain Court of Cassation decided the case Happy Flights v Ryanair. The Dutch version of the decision is available here.
At issue was the validity of the clause in Ryanair’s general terms and conditions that the Irish courts have jurisdiction over disputes. The Court of Cassation quashed the decision of the Commercial Court of Brussels, which had considered only the formal validity of the choice-of-court clause.
The Court of Cassation confirmed that the consumer protection provisions of Brussels Ia do not apply (the contracts concern transport). It further found that according to Art. 25(1) of Brussels Ia the substantive validity of the clause (in a non-negotiated contract) was subject to Irish law (specifically the Irish implementation in Act 27/1995 of Directive 93/13/EEG on unfair terms in consumer contracts). The Court did not explicitly refer to Irish private international law (according to Consideration 20 of Brussels Ia), but directly to Act 27/1995.
It sent the case back to the Commercial Court of Leuven for a new assessment.
Anti-Semitism – Responses of Private International Law
Prof. Dr. Marc-Philippe Weller and Markus Lieberknecht, Heidelberg University, have kindly provided us with the following blog post which is a condensed abstract of the authors’ article in the Juristenzeitung (JZ) 2019, p. 317 et seqq. which explores the topic in greater detail and includes comprehensive references to the relevant case law and literature.
In one of the most controversial German judgments of 2018, the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt held that the air carrier Kuwait Airways could refuse transportation to an Israeli citizen living in Germany because fulfilling the contract would violate an anti-Israel boycott statute enacted by Kuwait in 1964. The Israeli citizen had validly booked a flight from Frankfurt to Bangkok with a layover in Kuwait City. However, Kuwait Airways hindered the Israeli passenger from boarding the aircraft in Frankfurt. According to the judgment of the Frankfurt Court, Kuwait Airways acted in line with the German legal framework: specific performance of the contract of carriage was deemed to be impossible because of the Kuwait boycott statute. Read more
News
New Article in Uniform Law Review
Today, the Uniform Law Review published a private international law article titled: CSA Okoli, “The Significance of a Forum Selection Agreement as an Indicator of the Implied Choice of Law in International Contracts: A Global Comparative Perspective”.
The abstract reads as follows:
Where the parties to an international contract fail to specify the choice of law, a forum selection agreement is one of the most, if not the most, significant factors to consider in implying the choice of law in many international, supranational, regional instruments, and national jurisdictions. However, it is an ill-defined, notoriously complex, and hotly debated issue as to the weight that should be attached to a forum selection agreement in implying the choice of law. Hence, this article is devoted to discussing this topic from a comparative perspective, in order to propose a guide to global uniform criteria. To achieve this, the article covers all relevant international, regional, and supranational instruments, and selected legal systems in Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. The legal systems compared include those from the global North and global South, including common law, civil law, and mixed legal systems. The article’s core proposal is that an exclusive forum selection agreement should be a key factor in implying the choice of law. However, except in such cases as where a forum is chosen on a neutral basis, there should be a general requirement of corroboration with at least one other factor of significance. The aim of the proposal is to contribute to greater uniformity, predictability, and certainty in the global community in this field of law.
August 2023 Update: List of China’s Cases on Recognition of Foreign Judgments
Written by Dr. Meng Yu and Dr. Guodong Du, co-founders of China Justice Observer*
On 20 August 2023, China Justice Observer released the 2023 version of List of China’s Cases on Recognition of Foreign Judgments. To date, we have collected 98 cases involving China and 25 foreign States and regions. (Note: Foreign divorce judgments are excluded in the Case List.)
Diccionario digital de Derecho Internacional Privado in open access
Diccionario digital de Derecho Internacional Privado contains no less than 1522 pages in the Spanish language dedicated to analysis of crucial notions in private international law. Each notion is explained in length and accompanies with bibliographic references.
This electronic publication is edited by Jorge Luis Collantes González and features contributions by many private international law authors. It may be downloaded free of charge here.