Just two days after losing to LOSC Lille in the Champions League, Real Madrid suffered another defeat against a French opponent. Among the 44 (!) judgments published this Friday by the CJEU – a flurry of decisions reminiscent of the madness that is the current Champions League format –, the Court decided a true ‘clásico’ of European private international law in Case C-633/22 Real Madrid Club de Fútbol.
by Salih Okur (University of Augsburg)
On 8 and 9 March, scholars from more than a dozen different jurisdictions followed the invitation of Tobias Lutzi to discuss recent trends in punitive damages at the University of Augsburg, Germany. Despite an unfortunate combination of rail and flight strikes, only a small number of participants were ultimately unable to make it to Augsburg. While their presence was dearly missed, the option of participating in the conference online meant that nothing stood in the way of more than 50 scholars of private and private international law devoting the next 26 hours to critically discuss whether and to what extent a strict refusal to recognise foreign punitive damage awards – as notably upheld in Germany – was still tenable in light of international developments.
The conference contained five panels overall, which were split into three blocks. It was kicked off by Tobias Lutzi and Marc Lendermann (Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport, Germany), who underlined the continued relevance of punitive damages as a research topic, despite the German Federal Court of Justice’s landmark decision from 1992 (BGHZ 118, 312), which appears to have stopped claimants from seeking enforcement of punitive damage awards in Germany. It evidently has not stopped claimants from seeking enforcement of punitive damage awards in other civil law legal systems. As the conference would highlight on the second day, some legal systems, including Italy, France, and South Korea, which originally refused to recognise foreign decisions on grounds similar to those of the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH), have abandoned their strict refusal and adopted a more nuanced approach. This constant flow of international change and developments alone makes it worthwhile to keep the academic conversation going.
Due to massive strikes in Germany’s public transport sector, we have made the decision to move the conference on “Who’s Afraid of Punitive Damages?”, to take place in Augsburg on 8/9 March (originally announced here), to a hybrid format.
Accordingly, everyone interested in the topic is welcome to join some (or all) presentations via this Zoom link (ID: 624 2497 5622; password: &ZB&%1).
The latest version of the conference programme can be found here.
On 8 and 9 March, a conference will be held at the University of Augsburg, Germany, to discuss the current developments in the award and/or recognition of punitive damages. The conference, which is part of a larger research project, takes the leading German decision on the question as a starting point to discuss if and to what extent its highly restrictive approach is still tenable.