Agrégateur de flux

17-28.208
F-P+B

The American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL) has just issued a call for proposals for (1) concurrent panels and (2) a works in progress conference to be held in association with the ASCL 2019 Annual Meeting, which will be held at the University of Missouri School of Law between Thursday, October 17, and Saturday, October 19, 2019.  The event is open to ASCL and non-ASCL members.

The theme of the Annual Meeting is “Comparative Law and International Dispute Resolution Processes” and will feature presentations on how comparative law affects various types of cross-border conflict, including litigation, arbitration and mediation.  Concurrent panels and works in progress papers need not fall within this general theme, although of course they may.  Multilingual panel proposals will be considered as part of ASCL’s mission to foster plurilingualism.

Information on the event, including the call for panel proposals and works in progress submissions, is available at

http://law.missouri.edu/faculty/symposia/comparative-law-international-dispute-resolution-processes/  Proposals will be accepted until May 20, 2019.

Thank you Hélène Péroz for flagging 17-19.935 X v AS Monaco at the French Supreme Court, held December 2018. Claimant is a former physiotherapist employed by AS Monaco. His contract included choice of court ex-EU (not further specified in the judgment but one assumes, Monaco. Monaco is one of those micro-States with a complex arrangement with the EU).

The Supreme court first of all addresses the application of France’s jurisdictional rule R. 1412-1 of the Code du Travail. It assigns territorial jurisdiction in principle to the employment courts of the area where the employee habitually carries out the employment, with fall-back options which are similar to yet not quite the same as the provisions of Brussels I Recast:

Art. R. 1412- 1 L’employeur et le salarié portent les différends et litiges devant le conseil de prud’hommes territorialement compétent. Ce conseil est :

1 Soit celui dans le ressort duquel est situé l’établissement où est accompli le travail ;

2 Soit, lorsque le travail est accompli à domicile ou en dehors de toute entreprise ou établissement, celui dans le ressort duquel est situé le domicile du salarié.

Le salarié peut également saisir les conseils de prud’hommes du lieu où l’engagement a été contracté ou celui du lieu où l’employeur est établi. — [ Anc. art. R. 517- 1, al. 1er à 3.]

These provisions cast a slightly wider jurisdictional net than Brussels I Recast. That gap was even wider before Brussels I Recast had extended its jurisdictional reach to parties (the employer, or the business in the case of the consumer title) domiciled ex-EU. It is particularly its existence pre Brussels I Recast for which the provision is ranked among France’s exorbitant jurisdictional rules.

Now, coming to the case at issue. The Supreme Court first of all addresses the nature of the provision as lois de police and severely curtails same in the event of choice of court ex-EU: ‘ce n’est que si le contrat est exécuté dans un établissement situé en France ou en dehors de tout établissement que les dispositions d’ordre public de l’article R. 1412-1 font échec à l’application d’une telle clause.’ Only if the contract is performed in an establishment of the employer in France, or entirely outside such establishment (from the employee’s home or ‘on the road’) does Article R.1412-1 trump choice of court ex-EU. The lower court’s judgment had failed to assess these circumstances and therefore infringes the Article.

One suspects the Court felt it necessary to dot the i’s and cross the t’s on this issue for the natural order of analysis would of course have been to look at Brussels I Recast first: which the Court does after its analysis of the French law, thereby forgiving the lower court its incorrect application of French law. Reportedly the application of Brussels I to the issue is not something the Court has properly done in the past.

Article 21 Brussels I Recast requires assessment of the place of habitual carrying out of the work. Claimant worked mostly from the club’s training ground, which is in Turbie, France, and accompanied the club at fixtures. These however by reason of the football calendar clearly took place in Monaco only one out of two games (see the Count of Luxembourg for similar identification of the relevant criteria). Core of the employment therefore is France, notably in the Nice judicial area and therefore the lower court was right to uphold its jurisdiction.

Geert.

(Handbook of) EU private international law, 2nd ed. 2016, Chapter 2, Heading 2.2.8.3.

The proceedings of the 29th edition of the Journée de droit international privé, the conference devoted to private international law topics organised yearly at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law, have just been published under the title US Litigation Today: Still a Threat For European Businesses or Just a Paper Tiger?.

The volume, edited by Andrea Bonomi and Krista Nadakavukaren Schefer, discusses the current realities of US litigation for foreign companies. It features contributions by Samuel P. Baumgartner, Andrea Bonomi, Thirza Döbeli, William S. Dodge, Susan Emmenegger, Christoph A. Kern, Matthias Lehmann, Eva Lein, Linda J. Silberman, Symeon C. Symeonides, Karen Topaz Druckman, and Thomas Werlen.

For more information, including the table of contents, see here.

The Classical Liberal Institute and Willamette University College of Law invite you to a a symposium on “The Extraterritorial State.” The symposium will be held this Friday and Saturday, January 25th and 26th, in the Hearings Room of the Oregon Civic Justice Center. The symposium is free and open to faculty, students, and the public. The proceedings of the symposium will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Willamette Law Review. Please feel free to attend the entire event, or whichever panels are of most interest. Please find the complete list of presentation topics and schedule below.

Friday, January 25th

Hearings Room, Oregon Civic Justice Center (790 State Street, Salem, Oregon 97301)

9:30 – 10:00am: Registration (Continental breakfast available)

10:00 – 10:15am: Opening Remarks

10:15 – 11:45am: Session 1

Presentation 1: Bill Dodge, “Reasonableness in the Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law”

Presentation 2: Frank Gevurtz, “Extraterritoriality and the Fourth Restatement of Foreign Relations Law: Opportunities Lost”

11:45 – 12:00pm: Break

12:00 – 1:30: Session 2

Presentation 3: Maggie Gardner, “Minding the Empagran Gap”

Presentation 4: John Coyle, “Party Autonomy and the Presumption Against Extraterritoriality”

1:30 – 2:15pm: Lunch in the Oregon Civic Justice Center

2:15 – 3:45pm: Session 3

Presentation 5: Andra Burke Robertson, “Conspiracy, and Accomplice Liability under the FCPA”

Presentation 6: Yanbai Andrea Wang, “Exporting American Discovery”

3:45 – 4:00pm: Break

4:00 – 4:45pm: Session 4

Presentation 7: Richard Epstein, “Citizenship, Alienage and Territoriality”

Saturday, January 26th

Hearings Room, Oregon Civic Justice Center (790 State Street, Salem, Oregon 97301)

9:30 – 10:00am: Registration (Continental breakfast available)

10:00 – 11:30am: Session 5

Presentation 8: Kevin Benish, “Whose Law Governs Your Data?: Worldwide Injunctions, Extraterritorial Effects, And The Struggle To Regulate The Internet”

Presentation 9: Symeon Symeonides, “Injuries to Rights or Personality Through the Use of the Internet: Jurisdiction, Applicable Law, and Recognition of Foreign Judgments”

11:30 – 11:45am: Break

11:45 – 1:15pm: Session 6

Presentation 10: Jim Nafziger, “Extraterritorial Enforcement of Judgments: Rubin v. Islamic Republic of Iran, Foreign Sovereign Immunity, and the Protection of Cultural Property”

Presentation 11: Aaron Simowitz, “Defining Daimler‘s Domain: Consent, Jurisdiction, and Regulation of Terrorism”

1:15 – 2:00pm: Lunch in the Oregon Civic Justice Center

End of conference.