Oberster Gerichtshof; 2020-06-25; 6 Ob 215/19i
Decision by national courts in the field of European Union law — ECLI:AT:OGH0002:2020:0060OB00215.19I.0625.000
Date: 2020-06-25
Subject matter: Judicial cooperation in civil matters
Origin: Austria

82020AT0625(51)_ENG_SUMJURE
JURE summary
JURE summary
A private person, not having their centre of interests in Austria until 2015 (hereinafter ‘the plaintiff’) filed an action against a website operator domiciled in the Netherlands (hereinafter ‘the defendant’) seeking the compensation for injury, the issuance of a cease and desist order and the publication of the decision.
Early in 2008, the defendant published on its websites an article in Dutch language regarding the plaintiff. The plaintiff claimed that due to the defamatory and offensive nature of the content, the plaintiff developed depression.
The Landesgericht Salzburg as the Court of First Instance dismissed the action.
The appeal of the plaintiff lodged with the Oberlandesgericht Linz (hereinafter ‘the Court of Appeal’) was not successful due to the fact that plaintiff sought compensation for a whole loss which happened prior to 2008, i.e. at a time when the plaintiff had not had her centre of interests in Austria.
The plaintiff pursued her claim unsuccessfully further by filing an extraordinary revision with the Oberstes Gerichtshof (hereinafter ‘the Supreme Court’).
According to the Supreme court, the Court of Appeal was correct to conclude that under a previous decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (1), the applicable Article 5(3) of the Brussels I Regulation (2) (today Article 7(2) of the Brussels I Regulation (recast) (3)) was to be interpreted to the extent that a person who considered their personal rights to have been violated by content published online has the choice to file an action for compensation regarding the whole loss either with the courts of the Member State where the author of such a content was domiciled or with the courts of the Member State in which the person has the centre of their interests.
Or instead, the plaintiff was also entitled to file the action with courts of the Member States in whose territory the respective published content was accessible. In this case, however, the decision could only regard the harm suffered in Austria. In order for the plaintiff to be able to seek compensation for the whole loss, the relevant Member State was the country where the injury occurred first, i.e. the Netherlands.
The Supreme Court dismissed the revision of the plaintiff.
(1)  Judgment of the Court of Justice of 25 October 2011, eDate Advertising GmbH and Others v X and Société MGN LIMITED, C-509/09 and C-161/10, ECLI:EU:C:2011:685.
(2) Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters.
(3) 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.