LG Frankfurt; 2016-06-10; 2-07 O 364/15, 2/07 O 364/15, 2-7 O 364/15, 2/7 O 364/15
Decision by national courts in the field of European Union law — ECLI:DE:LGFFM:2016:0610.2.07O364.15.00
Date: 2016-06-10
Subject matter: Judicial cooperation in civil matters
Origin: Germany

82016DE0610(51)_ENG_SUMJURE
JURE summary
JURE summary
A bank domiciled in the United Kingdom (hereinafter ‘the plaintiff’) filed an action against a provider of capital life insurance domiciled in Germany (hereinafter ‘the defendant’) asserting recourse claims arising from connected transactions.
The plaintiff concluded individual loan agreements with four married couples (hereinafter ‘the borrowers). The aim of these agreements was to provide financial means for the borrowers to carry out one-off payments for capital life insurance agreements they parallelly concluded with the defendant.  Later, the borrowers pointed out that the loan agreements and the insurance agreements represented related business transactions and withdrew from the agreements.
According to the plaintiff, the court holding the international jurisdiction was the Landgericht Frankfurt am Main (hereinafter ‘the Court of First Instance’) under Article 5(1)(a) of the Brussels I Regulation (1).
The defendant contested the international jurisdiction of the Court of First Instance stating that no effective expressions of will existed in the case.
The Court of First Instance found the action inadmissible citing that no contractual obligation which would represent a voluntarily accepted obligation by one party in favour of the other party, as defined in the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, had existed in this case.
It was evident that the plaintiff and the defendant had not concluded any agreement directly between themselves. The claim asserted against the defendant was not based on a voluntarily obligation but resulted from a statutory protective law (2).
(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.
(2) Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (the German Civil Code).