Nejvyšší soud; 2017-02-02; 30 Nd 8/2017
Decision by national courts in the field of European Union law — ECLI:CZ:NS:2017:30.ND.8.2017.1
Date: 2017-02-07
Subject matter: Judicial cooperation in civil matters
Origin: Czechia

82017CZ0207(51)_ENG_SUMJURE
JURE summary
JURE summary
This case regards a dispute between a Czech citizen J.V. (hereinafter “the plaintiff”) against the company ZNANYLEKARZ (hereinafter “the defendant”), registered in Poland.
The defendant created, on the web page www.znamylekar.cz administered by him, an account using the plaintiff’s data. The access had to be granted to the plaintiff upon notifying the defendant of his e-mail address. However, the plaintiff notified the defendant of his disagreement with the account creation and asked the defendant to remove all his personal data from the web page.
The case was transferred to the Obvodní soud Praha 8 (hereinafter “the District Court Prague 8”) which declared its lack of jurisdiction to hear the case and asked the Nejvyšší soud (hereinafter “the Supreme Court”) to rule which Czech court should hear and decide this case.
The Supreme Court cited the applicability of the Brussels I Regulation (1), which may be used for the determination of both international and local jurisdiction. Following Article 24 of the Brussels I Regulation and previous case-law of the Supreme Court, any court can assess its international jurisdiction before it notifies the defendant of the action filed against him, unless the case concerns exclusive jurisdiction by virtue of Article 22 or the defendant does not enter an appearance to contest the jurisdiction.
This specific dispute does not fall under the exceptions set in Article 22. The case file registered in the District Court Prague 8 contains several statements of the defendant’s and no objections to the international or local jurisdiction. Therefore, the Supreme Court decided that the District Court Prague 8 would hear and decide this case by virtue of Article 24 of the Brussels I Regulation.
(1) Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters.