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| Abstract | ||||||||||||||||||
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| A German seller and a French buyer concluded a contract for the sale of car accessories. The seller entrusted a carrier company with shipping the goods to France. The seller and the carrier company stipulated that the goods would only be delivered to the buyer by cash on delivery. In spite of this agreement, the carrier company delivered the goods to the buyer without accepting the money.
The carrier's insurance company, which paid the resulting damages to the seller and to whom the claim for the purchase price was assigned, brought an action against the buyer. The Court affirmed that it did not have jurisdiction over the case. In reaching this conclusion the Court first stated that claims for the recovery of the purchase price would generally fall within its jurisdiction as, according to Art. 57(1)(a) CISG, the purchase price has to be paid at the seller´s place of business. In the case at hand, however, the parties had agreed on a "cash against documents" term, which meant that the obligations of the two parties had to be performed simultaneously (see Art. 58 CISG); art. 57(1)(b) CISG was applicable since delivery and therefore also payment had to be performed at the buyer´s place of business (Paris). |