It is a contested issue whether it is admissible for parties to attend German court hearings by videolink whilst being abroad. Many, if not the majority of legal commentators argue that this is not admissible without prior approval from the foreign state concerned, because the German court thereby exercises Germany’s sovereign on foreign soil and thus violates the sovereignty of the foreign state where the parties are located. Read More
Category: International Litigation
“The HCCH 2019 Judgments Convention: Cornerstones, Prospects, Outlook” – Conference, Bonn, 9/10 September 2022
Back in February 2020, one of the last pre-Pandemic posts on this blog was by Matthias Weller. Professor Weller introduced a conference on a topic at the very heart of this blog, namely the Hague Judgments Convention. The conference did of course not go ahead as planned in 2020, because nothing did. Nor did it take place in 2021, but we are all fairly optimistic that everything will work out the third time round. I suggest that you mark 9 and 10 September 2022 in your diaries. Click here for details. Read More
EU Commission: Proposal on Cross-Border Videoconferencing in Court Hearings
When the pandemic started and court hearings by video became a real thing, German lawyers found, sometimes to their surprise, that the law was actually quite advanced: Already back in 2002, Section 128a ZPO was introduced to allow the conduct of court hearings using videoconferencing technology and the law was updated in 2013 (see our earlier post “Remote Courts in Germany” for details). The law in action has since caught up with the law on the books: Courts have been equipped with the necessary hardware and hearings by videoconferencing have become a regular feature in many court rooms across the country – and they are likely to stay in a post-pandemic world. However, there remains some uncertainty regarding the use of videoconferencing in a cross-border context.
Read More
German Bar Association – Civil Litigation Committee
The German Bar Association (Deutscher Anwaltverein – DAV) comprises 252 local bar associations and more than 61,000 individual lawyers. It represents the interests of the German legal profession at the national, European and international level. I am honoured to have been appointed to its Civil Litigation Committee (Zivilverfahrensausschuss).