Case number and/or case name
OLG Celle, 26.11.2003 – 7 U 104/03
Summary
The plaintiff is an Italian company. The defendant is a German company. The parties concluded an exclusive delivery contract which was allegedly breached by the defendant. Part of the contract was a jurisdiction agreement stating that the place of jurisdiction is the international commercial court in Brussels. Therefore, the plaintiff sues for damages. The court of first instance declared the jurisdiction clause invalid and held that German courts are competent. The defendant appeals against this decision.
The court of appeal denied the international jurisdiction of German courts. The court of first instance wrongly held that the jurisdiction clause was not sufficiently precise. The criteria for jurisdiction agreements should not be interpreted too narrowly. The parties do not have to name the court explicitly but it has to be determinable. It is sufficient to name objective criteria which allows the court to decide whether its competent. The parties clearly wanted to choose a court od a third EU Member State and not Germany or Italy. Moreover, there is a commercial court in Brussels which is, according to the rules of private international law, also competent for international disputes. Hence, the German courts are not competent to hear the claim because the parties validly chose Belgian courts.
The judgement is in line with the case law of the CJEU.