Agrégateur de flux

Pourvoi c/ Cour d'appel de Rouen, chambre de l'instruction, 29 novembre 2018

Cour d'appel de Grenoble, 9 janvier 2019

On 28 and 29 March 2019, the international conference ‘Families Beyond Borders. Migration with or without private international law’ will take place in Ghent at the Faculty of Law of Ghent University (Belgium). The conference, organised by Jinske Verhellen, will focus on the challenging interactions between private international law, migration law and human rights law.

Speakers will deal with legal problems encountered by refugees and migrants with regard to their personal status acquired in one country and taken along to another country. How do people prove their family ties? How can families be reunited? How do unaccompanied refugee and migrant children prove their minority? How do asylum and migration authorities assess foreign documents that relate to the personal status of refugees? What happens if no (authentic) documents can be presented? How to combat fraud relating to personal status documents in an efficient manner without depriving migrants of their right to family life? These are just some questions that will be discussed.

The conference will put the spotlight on the ‘people’ (subject of all kinds of legal procedures). Therefore, the programme will be centred around three groups of people: persons in need of international protection, refugee and migrant children, migrants and their families. Both academics and experts with experience from the field will take and share the floor.

Ghent University is very honoured to welcome the following keynote speakers: Prof. James C. Hathaway (University of Michigan Law School) and Judge Ksenija Turkovic (European Court of Human Rights).

Confirmed speakers and rapporteurs are: Prof. Laura Carpaneto (University of Genoa), Prof. Sabine Corneloup (Université Paris II), Judge Martina Erb Klünemann (Family Court Germany, EJN and International Hague Network of Judges), Katja Fournier (Coordinator Platform Minors in Exile), Dr. Susanne Gössl (University of Bonn), Steve Heylen (Vice-President European Association of Civil Registrars), Christelle Hilpert (Head of the French Central Authority – 1996 Hague Convention), Prof. Maarit Jänterä-Jareborg (Uppsala University), Prof. Fabienne Jault-Seseke (Université Versailles), Prof. Thalia Kruger (University of Antwerp), Dr. Andrea Struwe, (attorney), Lise Van Baelen (Restoring Family Links Officer, Belgian Red Cross), Dr. Hans van Loon (former Secretary General of the Hague Conference on Private International Law), Prof. Jinske Verhellen (Ghent University) and Prof. Patrick Wautelet (Université de Liège).

Prof. Jean-Yves Carlier (Université catholique Louvain) will draw the conference conclusions.

The full program and information on registration is available here.

SAS Institute Inc v World Programming Limited [2018] EWHC 3452 (Comm) is a rare example of refusal by an English court of enforcement of a US judgment. 20 Essex Street have excellent analysis here and I am happy generally to refer.

The outcome of English Proceedings was that WPL defeated SAS’ claims regarding software licence and copyright infringements, with an important role played by the European software Directive as applied by the CJEU in Case C-406/10 upon preliminary reference in the very case.

Meanwhile SAS had commenced concurrent proceedings in the US. WPL initially objected to the US Proceedings on forum non conveniens and other jurisdictional grounds. These objections were later withdrawn and WPL submitted to the jurisdiction of the US District Court and participated in the process before it. Judgment was awarded against it. SAS curtailed its claim of enforcement to as to increase chances of success: it only seeks to enforce the US Judgment in England insofar as it is for compensatory damages based on WPL’s fraud (an issue which was litigated in the US but not in the UK); it does not seek to enforce the breach of contract claim or that part of the US Judgment which awarded multiple damages.

At 35-36 Cockerill J summarises the law: ‘There are three strands of potential preclusion: cause of action estoppel (not live here) issue estoppel and Henderson v Henderson abuse of process. As Lord Sumption observed in Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd v Zodiac Seats UK Ltd [2013] UKSC 46, [2014] AC 160 at p.180H at [17]:

“…the policy underlying all of the…[res judicata] principles…” is “…the more general procedural rule against abusive proceedings…”.

The different doctrines therefore have different requirements, but they shoot at the same target – that of ensuring that nobody should be vexed twice in respect of one and the same cause: “nemo debet bis vexari pro una et eadem causa“: as it was put by Lord Diplock in Vervaeke v Smith [1983] AC 145 at p.160A-B, G. A more modern version was given by Lord Bingham in Johnson v Gore Wood [2002] 2 AC 1 at p.31A-B in the context of the Henderson doctrine:

“Henderson v Henderson abuse of process, as now understood, although separate and distinct from cause of action estoppel and issue estoppel, has much in common with them. The underlying public interest is the same: that there should be finality in litigation and that a party should not be twice vexed in the same matter. This public interest is reinforced by the current emphasis on efficiency and economy in the conduct of litigation, in the interests of the parties and the public as a whole.” ‘

Issue estoppel per Dicey (referred to by Cockerill J) at paragraph 14-156 means that a “foreign judgment will not be recognised if it is inconsistent with a previous decision of a competent English court in proceedings between the same parties“. Akin therefore in residual English private international law (EU law is not engaged, the judgment having been issued ex-EU) to Brussels I Recast’s Article 45(1)c ‘s rule.

The fundamental point is that issue estoppel bars relitigation not of all issues, but only of issues determined as an essential part of the cause of action (at 40). The Henderson principle is concerned with protecting the integrity of the cause of action and issue estoppel defences and preventing them from being deliberately or inadvertently circumvented by a party which did not advance an argument in England which would otherwise have created such an estoppel (at 47).

This is the core of the abuse investigation and this formulated one can see why it is a difficult test to apply.

At 55: ‘There are two issues: was the Fraud claim “parasitic” on the breach of contract claim and the related question of whether the Fraud claim was a separate, distinct and independent cause of action. Both of these really go to the question of whether there is sufficient identity of issue.’ At 73 Cockerill J concludes that there was such abuse: ‘Ultimately, I have come to the conclusion that the existence of the terms of the contract was a fundamental building block for the Fraud Claim and that without it that claim – as it was formulated in the US – could not have been run. The essence of the case in the US Proceedings related to alleged fraudulent representations concerning its “present intention to comply with those terms”. It was fundamental to the claim that WPL “had no intention of abiding by those terms“. It was inherent in that case that those terms did exist; and yet the courts of this country had already held that those terms did not exist.’

Obiter, at 156 ff, Cockerill J adds that enforcement would also have been refused for reasons of the public policy embodied in the Software Directive. Authority in the arbitration context was referred to to pro inspiratio, including CJEU authority C-168/05 Mostaza Claro and C-126/97 Eco Swiss (at 163). At 179: ‘The fundamental problem for SAS is that the Directive plainly envisages the rendering null and void of provisions such as those on which SAS wants to rely, indeed that is explicitly the policy enunciated in the case-law and yet SAS’s fraud case is dependent upon those terms’ existence. The effect of the Directive is, as I have indicated above, to make SAS’s fraud claim (as formulated) impossible to express. It is therefore unrealistic to analyse the matter as the Directive “authorising frauds“.’ And at 184: ‘It is clear that the Software Directive gives expression to two important public policy objectives of preventing the monopolisation of ideas and promoting competition and consumer welfare.’

A very lengthy judgment which merits full reading.

Geert.