Source: http://conflictoflaws.net/2012/by-royal-appointment-no-closer-to-an-eu-private-international-law-settlement/
Timestamp: 2015-11-30 02:36:31
Document Index: 271391092

Matched Legal Cases: ['UKHL ', 'Art. 1', 'Art. 4', 'CJEU ', 'Art. 5', 'Art. 5', 'Art. 4', 'Art. 1']

Members of the British Royal Family and aristocracy have long contributed to the development of the law in England governing matters of personal privacy. As long ago as 1849, Prince Albert, the prince consort of Queen Victoria, resorted to the courts to prevent the publication of etchings and drawings by the Royal couple, including of their children (Prince Albert v Strange (1849) 2 De G & Sm 652). In a 1964 case, the Duchess of Argyll sued her formal husband, the 11th Duke, to prevent disclosure of the secrets of their marriage to national newspapers (Argyll v Argyll [1967] Ch. 302). In recent years, both Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, have taken legal action in the English courts following the disclosure, or threatened disclosure, of personal information.
The recent flurry of judicial activity following the unwarranted invasion of the privacy of Her Royal Highness Princess William, Duchess of Cambridge, Countess of Strathearn and Baroness Carrickfergus (a.k.a. Mrs Mountbatten-Windsor) highlights the potential advantages for claimants of French privacy laws, both civil and criminal. No doubt, the Duchess and her husband wished to be seen to have taken prompt and effective action to protect their private lives in this high profile case pour encourager les autres. Their chosen avenues of recourse through the French courts would appear to have been designed to serve both as a swift, effective and public assertion of their rights (the civil injunction) and as a deterrent (the nascent criminal complaint).
As yet, the incident and its aftermath do not seem momentous from a private international law perspective. The prosecution by English nationals of a civil claim in France against a French publisher, requiring the delivery up of photographs in the publisher’s possession which are said to have resulted from an invasion of the claimant’s privacy on French territory, would not appear to raise significant or complex issues of jurisdiction or applicable law.
Nevertheless, the case encourages reflection as to how well EU private international law deals with situations involving (alleged) violations of personal privacy, and other contributors to this symposium have raised a variety of issues.
Two introductory points may be noted before embarking on further discussion of this topic. First, and putting to one side the need to provide an autonomous definition in an EU context (see below), one must accept that the notion of a “violation of privacy” may in common usage cover a wide variety of fact situations, which are not necessarily to be treated alike. Taking the facts of the Duchess of Cambridge case as an example, the essence of any judicial complaint could rest upon the unauthorised (i) taking, (ii) transmission, (iii) receipt or (iv) publication of photographs or other media, with any transfer or publication occurring either (a) electronically (including via the internet) or (b) by other means. In other circumstances, a violation of personal privacy may be tantamount to a physical assault, as in the case of stalking, or to theft, as in the case of the removal of papers (the Pontiff’s butler) or computer hacking. The matter may also have a commercial background, in particular if the claimant intended himself to exploit the disclosed information, as in the Douglas-Zeta Jones wedding case (Douglas v Hello! Limited [2007] UKHL 21).
Secondly, if it is determined that any or all of these situations do require special treatment within EU private international law instruments, one must recognise that that this will inevitably create problems of classification, which may be thought to compromise the underlying objectives of promoting legal certainty, and harmonious decision making, that these instruments outwardly pursue.
EU law has already shown itself to be adept in creating difficulties of this kind. In the Rome II Regulation, non-contractual obligations arising out of violations of privacy (and of personality rights) are presently excluded altogether (Art. 1(2)(g)), but the task of elaborating what wrongful conduct amounts or does not amount to a “violation of privacy” for this purpose has been left to the courts, and remains incomplete. Following criticism levelled at this exception, there have been (as Professor von Hein explains) various proposals for a new, special rule covering the same ground as the current exclusion. If adopted, however, the new rule would not remove the classification problem, but merely transfer it from being one of the material scope of the Regulation to one of the material scope of a rule within the Regulation, and its separation from other rules (in particular, the general rule for tort/delict in Art. 4).
In relation to online activities, the eCommerce Directive raises many (as yet unresolved) issues as to the scope of its “country of origin” regulation, and the various exceptions and qualifications to that regime. The European Court’s eDate Advertising / Martinez decision, rather than clearing the air, has only heightened the challenges that this Directive presents in the area of civil liability.
Last but not least, the eDate decision also has a separate jurisdictional aspect, on which the remainder of this comment will focus. The effect of this part of the Court’s judgment is that a distinction must now be drawn for jurisdiction purposes between “an infringement of a personality right by means of the internet” (which the CJEU has told us merits a special, claimant-friendly interpretation of Art. 5(3)) and other cases (which remain subject to well-established principles governing the operation of that Article).
At first impression, these two points may seem to pull in different directions, the first supporting a more granular approach and the second tending towards a uniform solution. Both, however, provide reasons for caution when formulating special rules, whether of jurisdiction or applicable law, which treat violations of privacy and personality rights as a single, separate category. Further, the proliferation of different fact patterns within the realm of “violations of privacy” and analogies to other categories of wrongdoing (such as those highlighted above) may itself be thought to militate in favour of maintaining general rules such as Art. 5(3) of the Brussels I Regulation in its pre-eDate form and Art. 4 of the Rome II Regulation. The latter provision, in particular, may be argued to be sufficiently well-calibrated to deal with the range of new situations that would fall within its scope if the Art. 1(2)(g) exception were simply to be removed when the Regulation is reviewed.
In his contribution, Professor von Hein supports the adoption of a special rule for violations of privacy and personality rights. As part of his proposal, he favours giving claimants who sue in the courts of their own habitual residence or of the defendant’s domicile a right to elect to apply the law of the forum to the entire claim.
This element of Professor von Hein’s proposal seeks to build upon the jurisdictional aspect of the CJEU’s decision in eDate. This, however, is the law reform equivalent of constructing a house on swampland. The decision has strong claims to be the worst that the Court has ever delivered on the Brussels I regime, conflicting with long established principles central to the functioning of the Regulation and giving the impressi