Feed aggregator

Assurance - Courtier

Séparation des pouvoirs - Voie de fait

Transports maritimes - Voyageurs - Responsabilité

Séparation des pouvoirs

In a recent article, Samuel Fulli-Lemaire, a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg and a PhD candidate in Private International Family Law at the Paris II – Panthéon-Assas University, examined the private international law aspects of the PIP breast implants scandal.

The article, in French, appeared under the title Affaire PIP: quelques réflexions sur les aspects de droit international privé in the first issue for 2015 of the Revue internationale de droit économique, together with other papers concerning the PIP case.

Here’s an abstract of the article, provided by the author.

It is now common knowledge that the PIP company, domiciled in France, fraudulently mixed industrial-grade and medical-grade silicone gels to make its breast implants. The victims, women who have received the defective implants and have subsequently developed medical conditions, or who wish to have the implants removed or replaced as a precaution, can claim damages from a variety of actors. Because the victims, the clinics where the operations were performed, and the companies that were part of the supply chain, as well as their insurers, are domiciled in states spread all over the world, this case raises innumerable private international law issues.

This paper focuses on some of these issues, specifically those related to the tort actions which the victims can bring against the manufacturer, its executives, its insurer, and the notified body, which is the entity that was tasked with ensuring that PIP complied with its obligations under the European Union legal framework for medical products. In each case, both international jurisdiction and applicable law will be addressed.

To that end, some technical questions have to be answered first, for instance determining the place where the damage is sustained following the insertion of a potentially defective implant, or to what extent criminal courts can be expected to apply private international rules.

But on a more fundamental level, the PIP case highlights some of the shortcomings of the product liability regime in the single market. To take just one striking example, a French judge ruling on a claim against the manufacturer would apply the rules of the 1973 Hague Convention on the law applicable to products liability, while a German judge would apply the specific provision for product liability of the Rome II Regulation, a discrepancy which might ultimately result in the two claims being subject to different laws. Even though this particular field of the law has been harmonized by the 1985 Product Liability Directive, significant differences remain between the legislations of Member States, and these could have a decisive influence on the outcome of the cases.

This is just one factor that parties should take into account when deciding before which court to start proceedings, and it is likely that the significant forum shopping opportunities afforded to the victims by the Brussels I Regulation will be put to good use by the best-informed among them.

This state of affairs might legitimately be regarded as a lesser evil, since what is ultimately at stake is the compensation of victims of actual or possible bodily harm brought about by the fraudulent behaviour of a manufacturer. But the unequal treatment of victims, particularly depending on their domicile, cannot be regarded as satisfactory, any more than the considerable risk that contradictory or incoherent decisions will be rendered by the courts of different Member States, as some lower courts in Germany and France have already done.

The development of class actions, as introduced recently in French law, albeit in a very limited way, could help suppress or mitigate these difficulties, but accommodating these mechanisms within the framework of European private international law will create additional challenges.

Chris Thomale, Mietmutterschaft – Eine international-privatrechtliche Kritik, Mohr Siebeck, 2015, ISBN 9783161542398, pp. 154, Euro 34.

[Dal sito dell’editore] Die rechtliche Behandlung der Leihmutterschaft beschäftigt in wachsendem Maße Gerichte und Normsetzer auf allen Ebenen. Dabei berühren sich familienrechtliche mit international-privatrechtlichen, kollisionsrechtliche mit prozessrechtlichen sowie einfachrechtliche mit grundrechtlichen und unionsrechtlichen Anwendungsproblemen. Dieser Oberfläche der rechtspositiven Debatte liegen jedoch rechtsethische, rechtstheoretische und vor allem rechtspolitische Fragestellungen zugrunde, die sich erst aus der Regulierungsperspektive eines äußeren Betrachters und hypothetischen Rechtsetzers beurteilen lassen. Chris Thomale bemüht sich darum, beide Herangehensweisen zusammenzuführen, um die internationale Leihmutterschaft einer umfassenden Fundamentalkritik zu unterziehen.

Maggiori informazioni a questo indirizzo.

Sûretés réelles mobilières

Il Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza dell’Università di Catania organizza il 9 dicembre 2015 un incontro di studio sul tema Genitorialità, problematiche acquisite all’estero.

L’incontro, presieduto da Tommaso Auletta (Univ. Catania) ed introdotto da Pasquale Pirrone (Univ. Catania), ospiterà le relazioni di Roberto Baratta (Univ. Macerata) su Diritti fondamentali e riconoscimento dello status filii in casi di maternità surrogata, e Giulia Rossolillo (Univ. Pavia) in tema di Riconoscimento di adozioni sconosciute all’ordinamento nazionale. Interverranno, tra gli altri, Adriana Di Stefano e Rosario Sapienza (entrambi Univ. Catania).

Maggiori informazioni nella locandina reperibile qui.

Au sens du règlement n° 1393/2007 du 13 novembre 2007, la notion d’« acte extrajudiciaire » inclut non seulement les actes établis ou certifiés par une autorité publique ou un officier ministériel, mais également les actes privés dont la transmission formelle à leur destinataire résidant à l’étranger est nécessaire à l’exercice, à la preuve ou à la sauvegarde d’un droit ou d’une prétention juridique en matière civile ou commerciale.

En carrousel matière:  Non Matières OASIS:  Procédure civile - Principe directeurs

en lire plus

Jurisdiction and the internet is a topic which has featured once or twice on this blog recently (and in a  paper which I have already referred to in those earlier postings). Belgian’s Supreme Court in ordinary (the Hof van Cassatie /Cour de Cassation) employed the objective territoriality principle in a case with roots going back to 2007 (the fraudulent purchase of and subsequent failure to pay for electronic equipment from a shop in Dendermonde, Belgium), Yahoo! was requested to hand over the IP addresses associated with e-mail accounts registered to Yahoo!’s e-mail service. Yahoo! Inc, domiciled in California, refused to comply, triggering fines under criminal law.

Responding to Yahoo!s claims that Belgium was imposing its criminal laws extraterritorially, the Court of Appeal had held that Yahoo! is territorially present in Belgium, hereby voluntarily submitting itself to the jurisdiction of the Belgian authorities: it takes an active part in economic life in Belgium, among others by use of the domain name http://www.yahoo.be, the use of the local language(s) on that website, pop-up of advertisements based on the location of the users, and accessibility in Belgium of Belgium-focussed customer services (among others: a ‘Belgian’ Q&A, FAQ, and post box). [Notice the similarity with the Pammer /Alpenhof criteria]. The Court of Appeal had suggested that the accusations of extraterritoriality could only be accepted had there been a request for the handover of data or objects which are located in the USA, with which there is no Belgian territorial link whatsoever, and if the holder of these objects or data is not accessible in Belgium (either physically or virtually).

The Supreme Court on 1 December (not yet published in relevant databases – I have a copy for interested readers) confirmed all of the Court of Appeal’s arguments, essentially linking them to the objective territoriality principle. Yahoo! actively directs its activities towards consumers present in Belgium.

Even though the case involves a criminal proceeding, the Court’s judgment inevitably (not necessarily justifiably) will be used as further support for the Belgian tussle with Facebook.

Geert.

The Federal Judicial Center (FJC) has just published the most recent item in their series on international litigation. The text, entitled “Discovery in International Civil Litigation: A Guide for Judges,” was written by Timothy Harkness, Rahim Moloo, Patrick Oh and Charline Yim. The guide joins a variety of other titles, including those on mutual legal assistance treaties (T. Markus Funk), the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (David Stewart), international commercial arbitration (S.I. Strong), recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments (Ron Brand), and international extradition (Ronald Hedges).

The new text can be downloaded from the FJC website here. The other texts are also available for download at fjc.gov. If you would like a free copy of the new discovery guide or any of the judicial guides on international law, just contact the FJC.