The Month in Retrospect: What Else Happened in August 2021

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Coping with the Diesel Caseload

The Volkswagen wave of Diesel cases may be ebbing off in the lower courts, but Diesel-related claims against other manufacturers continue to be filed. In the Stuttgart district court (Landgericht), the number of new civil cases is up by 60%, driven primarily by Diesel claims against Daimler. And increasingly, cases end up in the Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof). This had let the court to temporarily create an additional senate, i.e. a bench of five judges. a measure that is taken extremely rarely. It helps distributing the burden more equally across the bench, but does not add capacity, as the number of judges appointed to the Federal Supreme Court does not change. Continue reading →

Settling Art Disputes by Alternative Dispute Resolution: Future and Challenges in Germany and Worldwide, 22 September 2021

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The University of Bonn, via its “Forschungsstelle Kunst- und Kulturgutschutzrecht” and the Court of Arbitration for Art are organizing a webinar on alternative dispute resoution in the art world: Continue reading →

Post-Brexit UK Accession to Lugano Convention: The EU Commission’s Assessment

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There has been a fair amount of speculation about the EU’s position regarding the application of the United Kingdom to accede to the 2007 Lugano, and we have tracked the topic fairly closely on the blog, including the latest press reports that the EU Commission might have changed its approach. Continue reading →

Art Law: Constitutional Challenges against Cultural Property Protection Act Fail

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Almost to the day five years after the Act on the Protection of Cultural Property (Kulturschutzgesetz; KGSG) entered into force, the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) published a decision which dismissed several constitutional complaints (Verfassungsbeschwerden) challenging various previsions of the Cultural Property Protection Act. The constitutional complaints were brought by art and antiquity dealers and auction houses. They alleged that certain provisions of the Cultural Property Protection Act violated their basic rights (Grundrechte) based on Article 12, which protects the freedom to choose and exercise one’s profession and occupation and on Article 14 Basic Law (Grundgesetz),which guarantees and protects the right to private property. Continue reading →

The Month in Retrospect: What Else Happened in July 2021

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Hague Evidence Convention In Force For Georgia, Mongolia Joins HCCH

On 31 May 2021, Georgia deposited its instrument of accession to the Convention of 18 March 1970 on the Taking of Evidence Abroad in Civil or Commercial Matters and on 30 July 2021, the Convetion came into force. This takes the total number of contracting parties to the Evidence Convention to 64.

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