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| A French seller and a British buyer concluded a contract for the sale of dummies. The buyer did not pay the contract price and the seller commenced a legal action before the Tribunal de Commerce de Paris, which declined its jurisdiction. The seller appealed.
The appellate court applied Art. 5(1) of the EC Convention on Jurisdiction and the Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters (Brussels, 1968) which states that a person domiciled in a Contracting State may be sued in the Court for the place of performance of the obligation in question (in the case at hand: the buyer's obligation to pay the price) to be ascertained according to the substantive law governing the contract. The court applied the French rules of private international law (in this case Art. 3 of the 1955 Hague Convention on the law applicable to the sale of goods) and held that French law and as such the CISG was the applicable law to determine the place of payment of the price (Art. 1(1)(b) CISG). Under Art. 57(1)(a) CISG, in the absence of an agreement to the contrary between the parties and if payment is not to be made against the handing over of the goods or of documents, the buyer must pay the price at the seller's place of business (which in this case was in France). Therefore the French courts had jurisdiction to hear the case. |