Réunion européenne SA and Others v Spliethoff's Bevrachtingskantoor BV and the Master of the vessel Alblasgracht V002.
Date: 1998-10-27
15 It must be pointed out that, according to settled case-law (Case 34/82 Peters v ZNAV [1983] ECR 987, paragraphs 9 and 10, Case 9/87 Arcado v Haviland [1988] ECR 1539, paragraphs 10 and 11, and Case C-26/91 Handte v Traitements Mécano-Chimiques des Surfaces [1992] ECR I-3967, paragraph 10), the phrase `matter relating to a contract' in Article 5(1) of the Convention is to be interpreted independently, having regard primarily to the objectives and general scheme of the Convention, in order to ensure that it is applied uniformly in all the Contracting States; that phrase cannot therefore be taken to refer to how the legal relationship in question before the national court is classified by the relevant national law.
16 It is also settled case-law that, under the system of the Convention, the general principle is that the courts of the Contracting State in which the defendant is domiciled are to have jurisdiction and that it is only by way of derogation from that principle that the Convention provides for cases, which are exhaustively listed, in which the defendant may or must, depending on the case, be sued in the courts of another Contracting State.  Consequently, the rules of jurisdiction which derogate from that general principle cannot give rise to an interpretation going beyond the cases envisaged by the Convention (see, in particular, Case C-269/95 Benincasa v Dentalkit [1997] ECR I-3767, paragraph 13).
17 It follows, as the Court held in paragraph 15 of Handte, cited above, that the phrase `matters relating to contract', as used in Article 5(1) of the Convention, is not to be understood as covering a situation in which there is no obligation freely assumed by one party towards the other.
22 In its judgment in Case 189/87 Kalfelis v Schröder [1988] ECR 5565, paragraph 18, the Court defined the concept of matters relating to tort, delict or quasi-delict within the meaning of Article 5(3) of the Convention as an independent concept covering all actions which seek to establish the liability of a defendant and which are not related to a `contract' within the meaning of Article 5(1).
27 It must borne in mind at the outset that, as the Court has held on several occasions (see the judgments in Case 21/76 Bier v Mines de Potasse d'Alsace, cited above, paragraph 11, Case C-220/88 Dumez France and Tracoba [1990] ECR I-49, paragraph 17, Case C-68/93 Shevill and Others v Presse Alliance [1995] ECR I-415, paragraph 19, and Case C-364/93 Marinari v Lloyds Bank and Another [1995] ECR I-2719, paragraph 10), the rule of special jurisdiction in Article 5(3) of the Convention, the choice of which is a matter for the plaintiff, is based on the existence of a particularly close connecting factor between the dispute and courts other than those of the State of the defendant's domicile which justifies the attribution of jurisdiction to those courts for reasons relating to the sound administration of justice and the efficacious conduct of proceedings.
28 It must next be observed that in the judgments cited above in Mines de Potasse d'Alsace, paragraphs 24 and 25, and Shevill and Others, paragraph 20, the Court held that, where the place of the happening of the event which may give rise to liability in tort, delict or quasi-delict and the place where that event results in damage are not identical, the expression `place where the harmful event occurred' in Article 5(3) of the Convention must be understood as being intended to cover both the place where the damage occurred and the place of the event giving rise to it, so that the defendant may be sued, at the option of the plaintiff, in the courts for either of those places.
29 In Marinari, cited above, paragraph 13, the Court made it clear that the choice thus available to the plaintiff cannot however be extended beyond the particular circumstances which justify it, since otherwise the general principle laid down in the first paragraph of Article 2 of the Convention that the courts of the Contracting State where the defendant is domiciled are to have jurisdiction would be negated, with the result that, in cases other than those expressly provided for, jurisdiction would be attributed to the courts of the plaintiff's domicile, a solution which the Convention does not favour since, in the second paragraph of Article 3, it excludes application of national provisions which make such jurisdiction available for proceedings against defendants domiciled in the territory of a Contracting State.
30 The Court went on to infer, in paragraph 14 of that judgment, that whilst it has thus been recognised that the term `place where the harmful event occurred' within the meaning of Article 5(3) of the Convention may cover both the place where the damage occurred and the place of the event giving rise to it, that term cannot be construed so extensively as to encompass any place where the adverse consequences can be felt of an event which has already caused damage actually arising elsewhere.
34 To allow the consignee to bring the actual maritime carrier before the courts for the place of final delivery or before those for the place where the damage was ascertained would in most cases mean attributing jurisdiction to the courts for the place of the plaintiff's domicile, whereas the authors of the Convention demonstrated their opposition to such attribution of jurisdiction otherwise than in the cases for which it expressly provides (see, to that effect, Dumez France and Tracoba, cited above, paragraphs 16 and 19, and Case C-89/91 Shearson Lehman Hutton v TVB [1993] ECR I-139, paragraph 17).  Furthermore, such an interpretation of the Convention would make the determination of the competent court depend on uncertain factors, which would be incompatible with the objective of the Convention which is to provide for a clear and certain attribution of jurisdiction (see, to that effect, Marinari, paragraph 19, and Handte, paragraph 19, both cited above).
39 As the Court made clear in Case 150/80 Elefanten Schuh v Jacqmain [1981] ECR 1671, paragraph 19, Article 22 of the Convention is intended to establish how related actions which have been brought before courts of different Contracting States are to be dealt with.  It does not confer jurisdiction; in particular, it does not accord jurisdiction to a court of a Contracting State to try an action which is related to another action of which that court is seised pursuant to the rules of the Convention.
47 In any event, the exception provided for in Article 6(1) of the Convention, derogating from the principle that the courts of the State in which the defendant is domiciled are to have jurisdiction, must be construed in such a way that there is no possibility of the very existence of that principle being called in question, in particular by allowing a plaintiff to make a claim against a number of defendants with the sole purpose of ousting the jurisdiction of the courts of the State where one of those defendants is domiciled (Kalfelis, cited above, paragraphs 8 and 9).
48 Accordingly, after pointing out that the purpose of Article 6(1) of the Convention, and of Article 22, is to ensure that judgments which are incompatible with each other are not given in the Contracting States, 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.
50 It follows that 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.
51 Finally, as the Court held in paragraph 20 of Kalfelis, whilst it is true that disadvantages arise from different aspects of the same dispute being adjudicated upon by different courts, it must be pointed out, on the one hand, that a plaintiff is always entitled to bring his action in its entirety before the courts for the domicile of the defendant and, on the other, that Article 22 of the Convention allows the first court seised, in certain circumstances, to hear the case in its entirety provided that there is a connection between the actions brought before the different courts.