Tribunal da Relação de Lisboa; 2023-12-07; 4488/20.5T8ALM.A.8.2E
Decision by national courts in the field of European Union law — ECLI:PT:TRL:2023:4488.20.5T8ALM.A.8.2E
Date: 2023-12-07
Subject matter: Judicial cooperation in civil matters
Origin: Portugal

82023PT1207(51)_ENG_SUMJURE
JURE summary
JURE summary
This case regards a matter of jurisdiction in a case for civil liability for damages, brought before the Tribunal da Relação de Lisboa (hereinafter ‘the Court of Appeal’)
The plaintiff, a Portuguese football player, filed a suit in the Juízo Central Cível de Almada (hereinafter ‘the Court of First Instance’) against an American company (hereinafter ‘the defendant’), claiming that the defendant used the plaintiff’s name and image in their video games without the plaintiff’s consent.
The defendant argued that Portuguese courts had no jurisdiction over the matter under the terms of the CPC (1), because the games had been produced in the United States, and that was also where the defendant had its registered address. The games had been sold all over the world, and the only connection to Portugal was the plaintiff’s nationality and domicile. The Court of First Instance should not have used the criteria of the Court of Justice of the European Union (which considers that, in cases of personal damages caused by the infringement of personality rights by audiovisual content distributed worldwide online, jurisdiction should fall on the country where the injured party has their centre of interests), because European Union law does not apply to this case. According to Article 6(1) of the Brussels I Regulation (recast) (2), if the defendant is not domiciled in a Member State, national law shall determine jurisdiction. The Court of First Instance violated constitutional norms by doing so.
The Court of First Instance denied the defendant’s claim and considered that the trial should be held in Portugal. The Court did not reply to the allegation of unconstitutionality.
The defendant appealed to the Court of Appeal, repeating the same arguments and adding that the judgment of the Court of First Instance should be declared null because it failed to address the issue raised by the defendant of unconstitutionality.
The Court of Appeal upheld the judgment of the Court of First Instance, with the following legal basis:
The Court of First Instance was not required to reply to the allegation of the unconstitutionality of the legal arguments supposedly behind the decision, because those arguments were not in its text. The judgment is clearly based on the facts alleged by the plaintiff, as is proper when ruling on the matter of jurisdiction, i.e., the plaintiff is not only a Portuguese citizen but also resides in Portugal and played football professionally in Portugal for eight of the 19 years of his career. This was the basis to apply Article 62(1)(b) of the CPC, which states that Portuguese courts shall have jurisdiction if the cause of action, or any of the facts which are part of the cause of action, took place in Portuguese territory.
The cause of action in this case is damages to the plaintiff’s personality rights and the unjust enrichment of the defendant from the infringement of those personality rights. In the case of damages to the plaintiff’s image, they occurred wherever the games were sold, shown and played. It is impossible to determine precisely how much damage occurred in each place, so the most correct solution is to choose the place with the most connection to the plaintiff, his centre of interests, which is Portugal, for the above stated reasons. As for the unjust enrichment, it occurs globally, but mainly in Portugal, because the professional repercussions of the defendant’s intrusion on the plaintiff’s personality rights are most significant here, where the personality right is exploited economically, namely, the place where the plaintiff works and lives. This means that there is a connection between Portugal and both causes of action in this matter, thereby justifying the international jurisdiction of Portuguese courts.
(1) Código de Processo Civil (Code of Civil Procedure).
(2) 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).