Summary
The claimant was suing for damages caused by a wrongful termination of an Employment contract. The contract between the parties incorporated a choice-of-court agreement. The case involved a group of companies on the defendant’s side.
By relying on the Brussels I’s weaker party protection rules, the claimant could sue “at the place where he is habitually carrying his work”. However, this appeared to be in Switzerland on this occasion. The claimant, who was an employee, preferred to rather sue in England. He was even prepared to invoke a jurisdictional agreement. The problem was that the choice-of-court agreement could have been unenforceable because Article 17/Article 23 does intend to protect employees as being weaker party in such relationships. The issue whether the protected party could waive the Article 17/Article 23 prohibition, albeit interesting, was not addressed by the court.
In spite of the fact that the Lugano Convention was to be used to allocate jurisdiction in this case, the interpretation of Article 60(1)(b) and (c) of the Brussels I Regulation was central to establishing jurisdiction in England under Article 6(1) of the Lugano Convention. HHJ Chambers held:
“3. My conclusion is that the claimant has shown a good arguable case to the effect that, when this action commenced, Crown Resources had its central administration and principal place of business within this jurisdiction within the meanings of respectively Article 60(1)(b) and (c) of Council Regulation (EC) No. 44/2001 (‘the Regulation’) and that Crown Energy may be sued as a defendant in this action under Article 6(1) of the Lugano Convention. “ [3]
Only the issue of jurisdiction was dealt with. The merits of the case were not considered. However, the case might have been wrongly decided in the light of the subsequent CJEU ruling in Freeport plc v Olle Arnoldsson which states that “the rule of special jurisdiction provided for in Article 6, point 1, of the Regulation cannot be applied to a dispute falling under Section 5 of Chapter II of that regulation concerning the jurisdiction rules applicable to individual contracts of employment.” Case C‑462/06, Freeport plc v Olle Arnoldsson [35]