Freeport plc v Olle Arnoldsson.
Date: 2007-10-11
31. It is established case-law that, in the procedure laid down by Article 234 EC providing for cooperation between national courts and the Court of Justice, it is for the latter to provide the referring court with an answer which will be of use to it and enable it to determine the case before it. To that end the Court of Justice may have to reformulate the questions referred to it (Case C‑210/04 FCE Bank  [2006] ECR I‑2803, paragraph 21, and the case-law cited).
34. In that regard, the jurisdiction provided for in Article 2 of Regulation No 44/2001, namely that the courts of the Member State in which the defendant is domiciled are to have jurisdiction, constitutes the general principle and it is only by way of derogation from that principle that that regulation provides for special rules of jurisdiction for cases, which are exhaustively listed, in which the defendant may or must, depending on the case, be sued in the courts of another Member State (see, Case C‑103/05 Reisch Montage  [2006] ECR I‑6827, paragraph 22, and the case-law cited).
35. Moreover, it is settled case-law that those special rules on jurisdiction must be strictly interpreted and cannot be given an interpretation going beyond the cases expressly envisaged by Regulation No 44/2001 ( Reisch Montage , paragraph 23, and the case-law cited).
36. As stated in recital 11 in the preamble to Regulation No 44/2001, the rules of jurisdiction must be highly predictable and founded on the principle that jurisdiction is generally based on the defendant’s domicile and jurisdiction must always be available on this ground save in a few well-defined situations in which the subject-matter of the litigation or the autonomy of the parties warrants a different linking factor.
39. As the Court has already held, for Article 6(1) of the Brussels Convention to apply, it must be ascertained whether, between various claims brought by the same plaintiff against different defendants, there is a connection of such a kind that it is expedient to determine those actions together in order to avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgments resulting from separate proceedings ( Kalfelis , paragraph 13).
40. The Court has had occasion to point out that, in order that decisions may be regarded as contradictory, it is not sufficient that there be a divergence in the outcome of the dispute, but that divergence must also arise in the context of the same situation of law and fact (Case C‑539/03 Roche Nederland and Others  [2006] ECR I‑6535, paragraph 26).
41. It is for the national court to assess whether there is a connection between the different claims brought before it, that is to say, a risk of irreconcilable judgments if those claims were determined separately and, in that regard, to take account of all the necessary factors in the case-file, which may, if appropriate yet without its being necessary for the assessment, lead it to take into consideration the legal bases of the actions brought before that court.
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).
53. Thus, that requirement of a connection did not derive from the wording of Article 6(1) of the Brussels Convention but was inferred from that provision by the Court in order to prevent the exception to the principle that jurisdiction is vested in the courts of the State of the defendant’s domicile laid down in Article 6(1) from calling into question the very existence of that principle ( Kalfelis , paragraph 8). That requirement, subsequently confirmed by the judgment in Réunion Européenne and Others , paragraph 48, was expressly enshrined in the drafting of Article 6(1) of Regulation No 44/2001, the successor to the Brussels Convention ( Roche Nederland and Others , paragraph 21).
54. In those circumstances, the answer to the question referred must be that Article 6(1) of Regulation No 44/2001 applies where claims brought against different defendants are connected when the proceedings are instituted, that is to say, where it is expedient to hear and determine them together to avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgments resulting from separate proceedings, without there being any further need to establish separately that the claims were not brought with the sole object of ousting the jurisdiction of the courts of the Member State where one of the defendants is domiciled.
The third question