Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
INTERNATIONAL PRIVATE LAW
Ardavan Arzandeh*
CASES
275. Committeri v Club Méditerranée SA (t/a Club Med Business)1
Conflict of laws—choice of law—nature of the obligation at the heart of the dispute—was the dispute contractual or non-contractual
The appellant, C, was a UK resident. He, and a number of his colleagues, travelled to France as part of a team-building exercise. The trip was organised by C’s employer, BNP, which had contracted the services of the respondent, CM. The contract between BNP and CM contained English choice-of-law and jurisdiction clauses. While ice-climbing in Chamonix, C suffered personal injuries. Subsequently, he started proceedings against CM in England. C relied on a provision within the French Tourism Code, claiming that CM was strictly liable under the agreement to ensure that he was safe at all times. C went on to argue that the fact that he had suffered the injuries in question meant that CM was in breach of its obligations.
In the proceedings, the main issue for consideration concerned the nature of the dispute between C and CM. If the claim were deemed to be contractual, then it would fail under English law, as the law governing the parties’ contract. However, if the claim were found to be non-contractual in nature, then it would be governed under French law and would succeed. At first instance, Dingemans J found that C’s claim against CM was in contract and liable to fail. C brought an appeal to the Court of Appeal.
Decision: Appeal dismissed.
Held: The appellant’s claim is rooted in the contract between his employer and the respondent. As a matter of autonomous EU law, the claim was contractual in character. As such, the law governing it should be determined based on principles within the Rome I Regulation.
Comment: For their Lordships, the key to resolving the dispute was to find whether this was a case in which the contract between CM and BNP was merely a “matter of background fact, of tangential relevance to the claim” or, rather, “the underlying source of the rights and obligations being disputed”.2 In the course of its analysis of the issues, the Court of Appeal placed reliance, among others, on the opinion of the Advocate General
* Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Bristol.
1. [2018] EWCA Civ 1889 (CA: Simon, Moylan, Coulson LJJ); affg [2016] EWHC 1510 (QB) (QB: Dingemans J).
2. Committeri, [55].
International Private Law
143