Brussels, 30/03/2011 (Agence Europe) - On 29 March, Advocate General Pedro Cruz Villalón put to the Court an interpretation of Regulation 44/2001 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters to determine the court competent to hear cases involving injury to personality rights (in this instance, defamatory comments) by internet.
The above-mentioned regulation gives guidance on deciding competence, making provision that, in cases of misdemeanour or civil delict, persons resident in a member state may be required to appear in another member state, before a court in the place where the harmful effect took place or could take place.
This rule is reasonably easy to apply when defamatory comments are made in the press: under Court case law, the court competent is the one in the country where the publication was disseminated and where the victim claims to have suffered damage to his/her reputation. However, when the comments are made on the internet, it is difficult to determine a geographically limited area of dissemination and, thus, to determine where the damage occurred. In the two cases before the Court, the parties alleged to have disseminated defamatory comments point out that there is no sufficient connecting factor between the disputed information on their internet site and the damage alleged by the complainants, in Germany and France respectively.
The advocate general responds to the questions for a preliminary ruling on this link by proposing a range of possibilities to the Court, establishing, nevertheless, a hierarchy with regard to the competence of the courts called on to hear the complaints. Thus, he says, the holder of the personality rights injured by the defamatory comments published on internet has the right to undertake an action for damages: - either in the courts of the member state where the publisher whose publication was injurious to his/her rights, these courts being competent to make good any damage as a result of infringement of these rights; - or in the courts of the member state in which the publication was disseminated and in which the holder of the personality rights claims to have suffered damage to his/her reputation, these courts being competent to rule solely on damages in the member state in which the court to which the case was referred is located; - or in the courts of the member state in which is situated the “centre of gravity of the dispute” between the goods and interests involved, these courts being competent to make good the damages in their entirety resulting from the infringement of personality rights. In this last case, the member state should be the one in which the information that is being challenged is “objectively and particularly relevant”, that is, likely to interest the public and to be read, and where the interests of the holder of the personality right are located (where the person adversely affected lives or makes his/her living or where the alleged injury to the personality rights could produce the greatest damage). (F.G./transl.rt)