The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled on Thursday 9 July (Case C-343/19) that a car manufacturer who has sold illegally rigged vehicles in Member States other than the one where the vehicle was produced can be sued for compensation in the national courts where the vehicles were sold.
The Verein für Konsumenteninformation (VKI), an Austrian consumer protection association, brought an action before an Austrian court in September 2018 to claim damages from the German car manufacturer Volkswagen, which had illegally rigged a large number of its vehicles to manipulate emission levels during type approval (see EUROPE 11394/2).
The Austrian organisation demanded that the German manufacturer be ordered to pay it the sum of €3.6 million and, in addition, that it be held liable for all damages which cannot yet be quantified. Volkswagen has challenged the international jurisdiction of the Austrian courts in this case.
Therefore, the Austrian Regional Court (Landesgericht Klagenfurt) asked the CJEU to interpret Regulation 1215/2012 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters.
Under that regulation, the Court explains, jurisdiction is certainly vested in the courts of the Member State in which the defendant is domiciled. However, in matters relating to tort, this regulation attributes special jurisdiction to the courts of the place where "the damage occurred" and the place of the "causal event" giving rise to the damage, it adds. Therefore, the defendant may also be sued, at the plaintiff's choice, in the courts of "either of those places".
However, the Court considers that the damage occurred in Austria, where the vehicle was sold for a price higher than its actual value. See the ruling: https://bit.ly/3gFPMRa (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)