WIREDGOV

The Brussels I Regulation¹ provides that persons domiciled in a Member State must, as a rule, be sued in the courts of that Member State. Nevertheless, when there are several defendants, a person may also be sued in the courts for the place where any one of them is domiciled, provided the claims are so closely connected that it is expedient to hear and determine them together to avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgments resulting from separate proceedings in different Member States.

The present dispute follows a decision of 3 May 2006 by which the Commission found that several companies supplying hydrogen peroxide and sodium perborate had participated in a cartel contrary to EU competition rules, by reason of which some of those companies were ordered to pay fines.²

Cartel Damage Claims Hydrogen Peroxide SA (CDC) is a Belgian company to which a number of companies operating in the industrial pulp and paper processing industry transferred their rights to damages suffered in connection with that cartel.

In March 2009, CDC brought an action for damages before the Landgericht Dortmund (Regional Court, Dortmund, Germany) against six of the companies3 fined by the Commission. As those companies were established in various Member States, CDC stated in its application that the German courts had jurisdiction to rule in respect of all the defendants because one of them, Evonik Degussa GmbH, had its registered office in Germany.

In September 2009, CDC withdrew its action against Evonik Degussa, following an out-of-court settlement.

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