JURE summary

JURE summary

The case concerns a cassation examined by the Polish Supreme Court against an order of the Appeal Court. The Appeal Court dismissed the claim for a compensation payment brought by a small entrepreneur located in Poland against a company with a statutory seat in Austria, with whom the claimant was in permanent business relations under the civil law cooperation contract.

Relevant law: Article 23 of the Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters (“Brussels I Regulation”).

Under the provisions of the Polish Act of 16 April 1993 r. on Fair Trading (o zwalczaniu nieuczciwej konkurencji), the claimant contested an alleged act of unfair competition on the part of the defendant and claimed the compensation payment under the law of tort. The alleged act of unfair competition occurred during a business transaction regulated under a supplementary agreement between the parties. The defendant objected the jurisdiction of the Polish courts under the terms of the general cooperation contract which provided a general jurisdiction clause, reserving jurisdiction in disputes between the parties for the Austrian courts.

The Supreme Court examined several issues brought by the claimant, namely the alleged general invalidity of the clause and the inapplicability of the clause for the specific supplementary agreement between the parties being the basis of the claim and its inapplicability in the case of tort claims. The Supreme Court examined the jurisdiction clause under Article 23 of the Brussels I Regulation and stated that the supplementary agreement and the general cooperation contract created the comprehensive legal regulation for the contested business transaction and, therefore, the jurisdiction clause applied. The Supreme Court noted that in the case of the interpretation of a contractual jurisdiction clause with the view to its application to a specific dispute, and in particular in the case of a dispute concerning a tort claim arising from such a contract, it is important to establish if the parties to the contract could have foreseen the possibility of this type of dispute when concluding the contract or complementing a legal relationship entered into when bound by the rules and condition of the initial contract.

As such was the situation in the case, the Supreme Court dismissed the claim.