The Month in Retrospect: What Else Happened in August 2021

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.

The Effects of Brexit on the Lugano Convention

We covered the European Union’s “no” to the United Kingdom’s application to accede to the Lugano Convention. Shortly thereafter, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgericht) published a landmark decision on applications for the recognition and enforcement of UK decisions in Switzerland that were issued prior to Brexit. The court confirmed that, under certain conditions, the Lugano Convention can still apply to recognition and enforcement proceedings in Switzerland relating to UK decisions, after Brexit and the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020. Our Swiss colleagues at Walder Wyss provide an analysis of the recent case law. The reasoning may of interest beyond UK/Swiss cases, as similar issues can arise under similar arrangements elsewhere.

Latest Issue of IPRax – Abstracts

Conflicts of Laws has English-language abstracts of the articles in the latest issue of IPRax. Several articles cover procedural issues, including a more technical piece on service abroad by Schlosser. And there even is an art law subject: The doyen of art law in Germany, Erik Jayme, offers his take on the Welfenschatz case before the U.S. Supreme Court (which we covered here).

The illustration shows Robert Boyle’s collection of essays (2nd Edition, London 1669).

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