OGH; 2022-03-30; 8 Ob 13/22b
Decision by national courts in the field of European Union law — ECLI:AT:OGH0002:2022:0080OB00013.22B.0330.000
Date: 2022-03-30
Subject matter: Judicial cooperation in civil matters
Origin: Austria

82022AT0330(51)_ENG_SUMJURE
JURE summary
JURE summary
A private limited company (hereinafter ‘the plaintiff’) filed an action against the defendant (hereinafter ‘the defendant’) demanding the payment of EUR 3,227 million.
The defendant contested the international jurisdiction of the Court of First Instance, stating that the assignment agreement made with the plaintiff contained an effective choice-of-court agreement.
The Oberlandesgericht Wien (hereinafter ‘the Court of Appeal’) found that no effective choice-of-court agreement had been made.
The defendant unsuccessfully pursued its claim further by lodging an extraordinary revision with the Oberstes Gerichtshof (hereinafter ‘the Supreme Court’). The Supreme Court stated that the revision did not raise any significant legal issues.
The question of whether an effective choice-of-court agreement had been made was subject to Article 25 of the Brussels I Regulation (recast) (1). The opinion of the Court of Appeal regarding the respective choice-of-court agreement could only have been modified in the case of a significant incorrect assessment of the matter. This, however, was not the case in the dispute.
The defendant relied on the choice-of-court agreement made by the parties in connection with the execution of the assignment agreement. However, the assignment agreement did not contain any payment obligation as demanded by the action. Such obligation could only be derived from a supplementary agreement, which was concluded at a later point. It was true that both documents pertained to the acquisition of shares of a private limited company by the defendant, but their contents were completely independent of each other. The agreement had already been made at that time when the defendant was already a shareholder of the private limited company following the acquisition of the shares under the assignment agreement.
The Supreme Court dismissed the extraordinary revision of the defendant.
(1) Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2012 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters (recast).