Source: http://conflictoflaws.net/2007/freeport-v-arnoldsson-art-61-of-the-brussels-i-regulation/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 05:09:48+00:00

Document:
two claims in one action for compensation, directed against different defendants and based in one instance on contractual liability and in the other on liability in tort or delict cannot be regarded as connected.
Right. Of course. So, what is really going on?
“48 (…) the Court held in Kalfelis that, for Article 6(1) of the Convention to apply there must exist between the various actions brought by the same plaintiff against different defendants a connection of such a kind that it is expedient to determine the actions together in order to avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgments resulting from separate proceedings.
49 In that connection, the Court also held in Kalfelis that a court which has jurisdiction under Article 5(3) of the Convention over an action in so far as it is based on tort or delict does not have jurisdiction over that action in so far as it is not so based.
“It seems to us that, although paragraph 50 of Réunion Européenne is undoubtedly clear, the full implications of the position there set out may possibly not have been considered by the Court”.
“43 As the Commission has rightly pointed out, that judgment [Réunion] has a factual and legal context different from that of the dispute in the present main proceedings. Firstly, it was the application of Article 5(1) and (3) of the Brussels Convention which was at issue in that judgment and not that of Article 6(1) of the Convention.
44 Secondly, that judgment, unlike the present case, concerned overlapping special jurisdiction based on Article 5(3) of the Brussels Convention to hear an action in tort or delict and special jurisdiction to hear an action based in contract, on the ground that there was a connection between the two actions. In other words, the judgment in Réunion Européenne and Others relates to an action brought before a court in a Member State where none of the defendants to the main proceedings was domiciled, whereas in the present case the action was brought, in application of Article 6(1) of Regulation No 44/2001, before the court for the place where one of the defendants in the main proceedings has its head office.
45 It was in the context of Article 5(3) of the Brussels Convention that the Court of Justice was able to conclude that two claims in one action, directed against different defendants and based in one instance on contractual liability and in the other on liability in tort or delict cannot be regarded as connected (Réunion Européenne and Others, paragraph 50).
I can only say, with all due respect: if you say so. Because this reading of Réunion seems to me, again with all due respect, fairly implausible. As to the substance, the clarification/reversal of the infamous paragraph 50 is, on the whole, to be welcomed. But Freeport/Arnoldsson does create new questions and leaves meany old ones still unanswered. If the contract/delict divide is abandoned (at least as a rigid rule), it would seem to follow that national courts will have significantly more leeway when assessing possible jurisdiction over multiple defendants, based on art. 6(1). This discretion seems all the more considerable given that the Court, elsewhere in its new judgment, rejects a basic notion of ‘abuse’. This would seem to mean that a claim against a defendant potentially liable for 99% of all damages at the domicile of a co-defendant potentially liable for the remaining 1% will be allowed under the Brussels Regulation. It seems likely that the Court will, over the coming years, have to revisit this vexed issue.
I’m not inclined to be as charitable.
Yes, they may have changed their minds, but it has taken them 10 years to do it. Moreover, when they do finally rectify their egregious error in Reunion Europeenne, they do it with a judgment that (as Jacco intimates above) leaves behind more questions than it does answers. Rather than Keynes, I would look to Thomas Moore: it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire for Article 6(1).
As the Court is not given to issuing press releases when it realises that it may have taken a wrong turn, when, during the last 10 years, did it fail to take advantage of an opportunity to recant the offending paragraph 50 ? It is fair to criticise the court for mistakes it makes. It is right to asperse it when it spurns an opportunity to put right a mistake previously made. But it is not to be blamed, surely, for not doing the impossible. As to ‘discretion’, I understand that the test to be used within Art 6.1 involves judgment, but I would not have thought that it was accurate to call it discretion.
Indeed, but surely that presupposes that the ECJ would have to hear a case on Article 6(1) and the relevant paragraph in Reunion Europeenne in order to airbrush it from the books (as it has just done in Freeport)?
The offending paragraph comes from a case in which Article 6(1) was, on the facts, inapplicable. Is it not, therefore, within the realm of the ECJ’s competence (what isn’t?) to undo what it had said rather quicker than it did do, in a case where Article 6(1) was, on the facts, inapplicable?
The problem, in my view, is not so much the fact that the Court did not recant earlier (as prof. Briggs writes: when could they have?), but the fact that they change course now in such an oblique way. This causes difficulties not only within the Regulation system itself (what about the prized objective of legal certainty?) but also, more generally, for the development of theories of precedent for the European legal order.
As to the use of the term ‘discretion’, I realize that art. 6(1) does not offer discretion of the kind involved in English discretionary doctrines such as forum non conveniens. But to the extent that the connection required by art. 6(1) comes in the form of a ‘standard’ rather than a ‘rule’, I would be inclined to think that discretion in a broader sense could be an appropriate term.
Ahem. RIP para. 48 of Réunion. This decision was surely inevitable: it was plain that the ECJ had not thought through the implications of its decision in Réunion, as the Court of Appeal pointed out in Watson v. First Choice  I.L.Pr. 8. So, for once, I am with Adrian on this one.
I also agree that this Art 6(1) involves an assessment by the court of whether the test of irreconcilability is satisfied – an exercise of a kind undertaken by courts in all legal systems – but NOT the exercise of a discretion (at least in the sense in which that term is invariably understood in common law systems). The point can be neatly illustrated by reference to Art 28. IF the proceedings are related (an assessment, very possibly engaging Art 28(3)), THEN the court has a discretion under Art 28(1) which it will exercise in deciding whether or not, in all the circumstances, to grant a stay.
We can all agree, I think, as to the result but disagree as to the means used. Had the reasoning used been deployed by an English High Court judge struggling to escape from the chains of an unquestionably binding and widely criticised Court of Appeal decision, one might (and I, for one, put it no higher than that) have some sympathy. This, however, emanates from the European Court of Justice, the supreme court of the European legal order, queen of all she surveys (and her empire grows ever larger). The Court is not bound by its earlier decisions, still less by throwaway remarks not necessary for the resolution of the (curious) question put to it in Reunion Europeenne. Had the Court said “this went further than both the decision and the terms of the 1968 Convention required” or even “this went further than the decision required and we can see why it has caused confusion and dissatisfaction in some quarters”, its decision in Freeport would not have raised doubts. By deploying a judicial sleight of hand, however, the Court calls into question, once again, whether it is deserving of our (common) trust as the arbiter of an increasingly broad civil justice regime under EC law. Like the principle of mutual trust in other Member State courts formulated in the Gasser and Owusu decisions, it is a fiduciary relationship from which the “beneficiaries” are not free to withdraw. But the importance of the Court’s role in our personal and professional lives is too important to allow the re-writing of history to pass without remark.

References: art. 6
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