Agrégateur de flux

By an individual application, the Turkish Constitutional Court for the first time examined an allegation of violation of rights secured under the Turkish Constitution in the proceedings before the Turkish courts in relation to the 1980 Hague International Child Abduction Convention. The Court decided by majority that the applicant’s right to respect for family life, which is guaranteed under Art 20 of the Constitution, was violated.

Burcu Yüksel, post-doctoral researcher at the University of Aberdeen and manager of the EUPILLAR project has written an article on this topic. It is published in International Family Law Journal, issue 3 of 2016.

A short version of the article is available here.

La Cour de justice de l’Union européenne, par un arrêt du 8 septembre 2016, poursuit son travail d’interprétation de la notion de communication au public dans le cadre de renvois par des liens hypertextes vers des œvres protégées.

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Tribunal de grande instance d'Angers, 14 septembre 2016

Pourvoi c/ Cour d'appel de Paris, pôle 7, 2e chambre de l'instruction, 6 juin 2016

The last part of this title is a bit of a stretch, apologies: soundbite beats nuance. I reported earlier on the High Court’s referral to the CJEU in the Cosmetics Regulation case, C-592/14 . The Court held last week, 21 September. Much like in C-366/10, the emissions trading /aviation case, the Court was unimpressed with accusations of extraterritoriality (‘territory’ is not discussed in the judgment) and does not even flag WTO concerns (Bobek AG had, and simply suggested this is an issue that solely lies with the WTO itself to resolve).

Referring to the need to interpret the Regulation with a view to its object and purpose, the Court insists that in particular to avoid easy circumvention of the Regulation, data obtained from animal testing carried out outside the EU, cannot be employed for the marketing of cosmetics in the EU, even if those tests had to be performed so as to meet the regulatory requirements of third countries.

Of course in WTO jargon, this recalls the discussion of non-product incorporated production processes and -methods (n-PR PPMs) however the Court is more concerned with regulatory efficiency.

Geert.

Dans trois arrêts, le Tribunal de l’Union européenne rappelle et contrôle les principes applicables aux mesures restrictives adoptées par le Conseil de l’Union européenne dans le cadre de sa politique extérieure. 

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Après avoir constaté que la lettre de voiture mentionnait la société venderesse, qui y avait apposé son cachet et sa signature, en qualité d’expéditeur/remettant, l’arrêt d’appel retient que celle-ci avait elle-même chargé, à l’aide de moyens de manutention spéciaux lui appartenant, les marchandises à l’intérieur du conteneur remis au transport. Ce dont il ressort qu’en dépit du choix par les parties au contrat de vente de l’incoterm Ex works, la société venderesse avait assumé la responsabilité des opérations de chargement de sorte qu’elle devait répondre des conséquences dommageables de leur exécution défectueuse.

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Following up on last week’s post on the Second Circuit’s comity decision in the Vitamin C Antitrust Litigation case, Professor Bill Dodge of UC Davis has the following thoughts (also cross-posted on Opinio Juris here)

American law has many doctrines based on international comity—doctrines that help mediate the relationship between the U.S. legal system and those of other nations. The Second Circuit’s decision last week in the Vitamin C Antitrust Litigation case correctly identified an international comity issue. But did it choose the right comity tool to address that issue?

Plaintiffs alleged that defendants, two Chinese companies, participated in a cartel to fix the price of vitamin C exported to the United States in violation of U.S. antitrust law. Defendants did not deny the allegations, but argued that Chinese law required them to coordinate export prices. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce backed the defendants in an amicus brief explaining Chinese law. The district court, however, declined to defer to the Ministry’s interpretation of Chinese law, awarding the plaintiffs $147 million in damages and permanently enjoining the defendants from further violations of U.S. antitrust laws.

On appeal, defendants argued that the district court should have dismissed on grounds of foreign state compulsion, international comity, act of state, and political question. While the political question doctrine rests on separation of powers, the other three grounds are all doctrines of prescriptive comity. As I have explained in a recent article, American law is full of international comity doctrines, each with its own specific requirements.

To avoid confusion, it is worth noting at the outset that although the Second Circuit repeatedly framed the question as whether the district court should “abstain from exercising jurisdiction,”Vitamin C was clearly not an international comity abstention case. International comity abstention is a doctrine of adjudicative comity, or deference to foreign courts. The Second Circuit has held that it is available only if parallel proceedings are pending in a foreign court. See Royal & Sun Alliance Ins. Co. of Canada v. Century Intern. Arms, Inc., 466 F.3d 88, 93-94 (2d Cir. 2006). The same is true in most other circuits that have adopted the doctrine (the cases are collected here at pp. 2112-14). The main exception is the Ninth Circuit, whose decision in Mujica v. Airscan Inc., 771 F.3d 580 (9th Cir. 2014), applied a broad and uncertain comity abstention doctrine that conflicts with its own precedents, those of other circuits, and even the Supreme Court’s. Because no parallel antitrust claims against these defendants were pending in Chinese courts, international comity abstention would not have been an appropriate ground on which to dismiss this case.

Instead, the Second Circuit properly viewed the Vitamin C case as raising questions of prescriptive comity—deference to foreign lawmakers—which U.S. law has developed a number of different doctrines to address (for discussion see here at pp. 2099-2105). The court relied particularly on an interest-balancing, comity doctrine commonly associated with Timberlane Lumber Co. v. Bank of America, 549 F.2d 597 (9th Cir. 1976), Mannington Mills, Inc. v. Congoleum Corp., 595 F.2d 1287 (3d Cir. 1979), and Section 403 of the Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law. In the court’s view, this doctrine authorized it to “balance the interests in adjudicating antitrust violations alleged to have harmed those within our jurisdiction with the official acts and interests of a foreign sovereign in respect to economic regulation within its borders” (slip op. at 4). The idea that U.S. courts are institutionally capable of balancing the interests of foreign governments against our own has the subject of significant criticism over the past three decades.

Moreover, it is hard to see how this particular prescriptive comity doctrine survives the Supreme Court’s later decisions in Hartford Fire Insurance Co. v. California, 509 U.S. 764 (1993), and F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. v. Empagran, S.A., 542 U.S. 155 (2004), both of which declined to apply a multi-factor balancing approach in antitrust cases. The Second Circuit read Hartford “narrowly” (slip op. at 20) not to preclude such an approach, particularly when compliance with both U.S. and foreign law was impossible. But the Second Circuit did not even mention Empagran, which expressly rejected case-by-case balancing as “too complex to prove workable.” Empagran recognized that ambiguous statutes should be construed “to avoid unreasonable interference with the sovereign authority of other nations,” but it also said in no uncertain terms that “application of our antitrust laws to foreign anticompetitive conduct is nonetheless reasonable, and hence consistent with principles of prescriptive comity, insofar as they reflect a legislative effort to redress domestic antitrust injury that foreign anticompetitive conduct has caused.” Plaintiffs unquestionably alleged domestic antitrust injury in Vitamin C, making the application of U.S. law reasonable and consistent with prescriptive comity, at least has the Supreme Court has understood these concepts in the antitrust context.

The act of state doctrine is a separate and distinct manifestation of international comity, requiring that the acts of foreign sovereigns performed within their own territories be deemed valid. But the Supreme Court has made clear that the act of state doctrine applies only when a U.S. court must “declare invalid, and thus ineffective as ‘a rule of decision for the courts of this country,’ the official act of a foreign sovereign.” W.S. Kirkpatrick & Co. v. Environmental Tectonics Corp., International, 493 U.S. 400, 405 (1990). To find that the defendants fixed the price of vitamin C, the district court did not have to find any part of Chinese law invalid or even to evaluate the conduct of the Chinese government. It only had to find that Chinese law did not immunize the defendants’ own conduct from liability under U.S. law.

The best fitting tool to address the prescriptive comity issue in Vitamin C would seem to be the doctrine of foreign state compulsion (also known as foreign sovereign compulsion), which sometimes allows a U.S. court to excuse violations of U.S. law on the ground that the violations were compelled by foreign law. That is precisely what defendants had argued in this case. Although the exact contours of this doctrine are uncertain, the U.S. government has recognized it as a defense in antitrust cases. See Antitrust Enforcement Guidelines for International Operations ¶ 3.32 (1995). China represented that its law compelled the defendants to coordinate export prices for vitamin C, and the Second Circuit considered itself bound by China’s interpretation of its own laws (slip op. at 30), which seems reasonable at least in these circumstances.

Unfortunately for the defendants, there are at least two potential problems with foreign state compulsion in this case. First, it appears that defendants may have asked the Chinese government to mandate their price fixing. See slip op. at 36-37. At least some authority suggests that a defendant wishing to claim foreign state compulsion as a defense must try in good faith to obtain relief from the compulsion from the foreign state. See, e.g., Societe Internationale v. Rogers, 357 U.S. 197, 208-09, 213 (1958). Second, it appears that defendants may have fixed prices at levels higher than those mandated by the Chinese government. See slip op. 38. The Second Circuit found this irrelevant to its “comity” analysis but seemed to acknowledge that such facts would preclude a foreign compulsion defense. See id.

U.S. courts have many tools at their disposal to address international comity issues. But sometimes no tool fits. “International comity” is not a universal wrench offering unlimited judicial discretion to dismiss cases that seem problematic. It is a principle underlying specific doctrines, with specific requirements, developed over many years to keep judicial discretion within bounds.

With many conflict of laws classes fresh underway, it is good to be reminded of the classics. Forum non conveniens was at issue in Kaynes v BP, at the Court of Appeal for Ontario. There is a pending class action in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas. The class in that proceeding includes current plaintiff and other Canadian investors who purchased BP securities on the NYSE.

The judgment has ample and concise background, please refer to it for same. The Court of appeal has now lifted a stay, previously put in place on forum non conveniens ground, in light of changed circumstance. The U.S. District Court judge ruled that as the moving party and his proposed Canadian class were members of the class represented by the lead plaintiffs, he was not entitled to now assert a separate class action based upon a claim that the lead plaintiffs had not pursued. Second, the U.S. District Court judge ruled that the moving party’s claim was time-barred under the Ontario Securities Act. Plaintiff and other members of his proposed class are free to pursue individual claims in the U.S. District Court (not already represented in the class action) based on Ontario securities law, subject to any defences BP may advance, including a limitations defence. (Note that the US court therefore holds limitations to be part of the lex causae, not lex fori).

Since the US court do not claim exclusive jurisdiction over the litigation, and given that if a case were to go ahead in the US, it would be subject to Ontario law, the stay was lifted.

The case is a good illustration that forum non conveniens is live and evolving, not static.

Geert.

Non renvoyée au Conseil constitutionnel

The German Notary Institute and the Chair of Civil Law, Private International Law and Comparative Law at the University of Regensburg are hosting a joint conference on the new Matrimonial Property Regulations for spouses and registered partners. The conference (in German language) will take place on 10 February 2017 in Würzburg. Speakers include:

• Professor Andrea Bonomi, Université de Lausanne
• Professor Michael Coester, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich
• Dr Christoph Döbereiner, Notary Public in Munich
• Professor Anatol Dutta, University of Regensburg
• Dr Andreas Köhler, University of Passau
• Professor Christian Kohler, Europa-Institut at the Saarland University
• Professor Stephan Lorenz, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich
• Professor Peter Mankowski, University of Hamburg
• Joanna Serdynska, European Commission, Brussels
• Dr Rembert Süß, German Notary Institute, Würzburg
• Dr Johannes Weber, German Notary Institute, Würzburg

The programme can be downloaded here.