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Happy New Year to our CoL Readers
The Editorial Team of CoL wishes all of you a Happy New Year! We will continue trying our best to keep you posted on conflict of law views and news from around the world.
A first moment of interest might be on Tuesday 14/01/2020, 09:30 CET. According to the Judicial Calendar of the European Court of Justice, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar will deliver his Opinion on the Request for a preliminary ruling from the Tribunale di Genova (Italy) lodged on 12 October 2018 — LG and Others v Rina S.p.A. and Ente Registro Italiano Navale (Case C-641/18).
The question referred to the ECJ relates to the application of the Brussels I Regulation and it reads (OJ C-25/18 of 21 January 2019):
Should Articles 1(1) and 2(1) of Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 (1) of 22 December 2000 be interpreted — particularly in the light of Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights and recital 16 of Directive 2009/15/EC (2) — as preventing a court of a Member State from waiving its jurisdiction by granting jurisdictional immunity to private entities and legal persons carrying out classification and/or certification activities, established in that Member State, in respect of the performance of those classification and/or certification activities on behalf of a non-EU State, in a dispute concerning compensation for death and personal injury caused by the sinking of a passenger ferry and liability for negligent conduct?
As is explained in the Request for the Preliminary Ruling
[T]he applicants — relatives of the victims and survivors of the sinking of the Al Salam Boccaccio ’98 ferry in the Red Sea on 2 and 3 February 2006, in which more than 1 000 people lost their lives — filed a lawsuit against the defendants seeking a judgment on their collective and/or joint and several civil liability for all pecuniary and non-pecuniary losses suffered as a result of the disaster in jure proprio or jure successionis and, as a result, the award of compensation in respect of those losses. The applicants submit that the defendants acted negligently when carrying out their classification and certification activities and when adopting decisions and guidelines, thereby rendering the vessel unstable and unsafe and causing it to sink.
The defendants entered an appearance […], challenging the applicants’ claims on various grounds, including in particular — with regard to the present proceedings — the defendants’ immunity from Italian jurisdiction. Briefly, that plea is based on the fact that RINA S.p.A. and RINA ENTE were summonsed in relation to activities carried out as delegates of a foreign sovereign State, the Republic of Panama. Those activities were an expression of the sovereign prerogatives of that delegating foreign State, in whose name and in whose interest the defendants acted.
We will keep you posted…
International Business Courts – open access book
International Business Courts: A European and Global Perspective (eds. Xandra Kramer & John Sorabji), Eleven International Publishing 2019.
Following our previous post announcing the publication of a special issues of Erasmus Law Review on International Business Courts (ELR 2019/1) as well as a book expanding on the topic, we bring to the attention of the readers that the book is open access available here. A paper copy can be ordered here (order form) .
Happy New Year’s reading!
Both publications result from and are financed by the ERC Consolidator project Building EU Civil Justice at the Erasmus School of Law in Rotterdam.
The blurb reads:
In recent years there has been significant growth in international business courts in Europe and across the world. They have been established as expert dispute resolution forums offering procedures in English for international commercial parties. Governments have promoted their development as an integral aspect of broader public policy agendas with the aim to enhance the rule of law and the attractiveness of their jurisdictions as legal and economic hubs. While these courts can be lauded for facilitating international commercial dispute resolution and boosting justice innovation, the development of competition in the international litigation market is a remarkable trend that merits discussion.
International Business Courts provides a comprehensive critical evaluation of the institutional design and procedural rules of established and emerging international business courts. It focuses on major European and global centres. It assesses to what extent these courts, the competition between them and their inter relationship with arbitration, contribute to justice innovation. It considers their impact on access to justice and the global litigation market, as well as their effect on the rule of law.This book is of interest to legal practitioners, academics and policy makers in the area of civil justice and international business litigation.
Call for Applications: 4th IAPL-MPI Summer School, July 2020
Under the direction of Professor Eduardo Oteiza (La Plata National University, Argentina) and Professor Burkhard Hess (Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law), the 4th edition of the IAPL–MPI Summer School will take place at the MPI Luxembourg on 27-30 July 2020.
The Summer School aims at bringing together outstanding young post-Doc researchers dealing with international and comparative procedural law as well as with other relevant dispute mechanisms for civil disputes. By way of exception, researchers at the very final stage of their Ph.D. project may also be admitted.
In 2020, the Summer School will focus on the interplay of global tendencies with local traditions in procedural law. This interplay may be analyzed from different perspectives, such as the cross-fertilization in lawmaking processes and between regulatory concepts or the impact of innovative methods and tools in procedural law. The Summer School also intends to reflect on the cultural dimension of litigation and dispute resolution mechanisms and on the role of local culture in shaping the approach to procedural law.
The application form and further information on the Summer School’s research focus are available here.
The deadline for applications is 31 January 2020.