| CONFLICT OF LAWS — Jurisdiction under European Regulation — Several defendants — Action by ex-employee against former employers domiciled in different member states — Whether possible for both employers to be sued in same state — Council Regulation (EEC) No 44/2001, art 6(1), Section 5 of Chapter II
Glaxosmithkline and another v Rouard (Case C-462/06); [2008] WLR (D) 172
ECJ: President of Chamber Jann, Judges Tizzano, Borg Barthet, Ilešič and Levits: 22 May 2008
The provision in art 6(1) of Regulation No 44/2001 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters (“the Regulation”), that “a person domiciled in a member state may … be sued … where he is one of a number of defendants, in the courts for the place where any one of them is domiciled …” did not apply to actions concerning individual contracts of employment.
The First Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Communities so held on a reference for a preliminary ruling by the Cour de cassation, France.
Art 18(1) of the Regulation, contained in Section 5 of Chapter II (arts 18–21), provides: “In matters relating to individual contracts of employment, jurisdiction shall be determined by this section …”
The claimant was employed first by the predecessor of the second defendant, a company established in France, and subsequently by the first defendant, a company in the same group, established in the UK, under a contract under which his rights under the employment contract with the second defendant were maintained. After his dismissal, the claimant brought an action, claiming various sums for wrongful dismissal and breach of contract, against the second defendant in France, and sought to join the first defendant in that action, in reliance on art 6(1) of the Regulation. In the course of the proceedings, the Cour de cassation requested a preliminary ruling on whether art 6(1) could apply in the circumstances.
THE COURT said that in the Regulation, unlike its predecessor the Brussels Convention of 1968 as amended, jurisdiction over individual contracts of employment was the subject of a specific section. It was clear from art 18(1) (i) that any dispute over an individual contract of employment had to be brought in accordance with the jurisdiction rules laid down in Section 5 of Chapter II, and (ii) that those rules could not be amended or supplemented by other rules of jurisdiction laid down in the Regulation, unless specific reference thereto was made in Section 5 itself. There was no such reference in Section 5 to art 6(1). Section 5 therefore precluded any recourse to art 6(1). That conclusion, based on the wording of the provisions, was supported by the travaux préparatoires for the Regulation and considerations of policy. The answer to the question referred was accordingly that the rule of special jurisdiction provided for in art 6(1) of the Regulation could not be applied to a dispute falling under Section 5 of Chapter II concerning the jurisdiction rules applicable to individual contracts of employment.
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