Exclusive jurisdiction clauses in European cases

The Brussels Convention 1968, now replaced in a modified form by European Council Regulation 44/2001/EC, sets out special jurisdictional rules in respect of policyholders domiciled within the European Union. Those rules are predicated on the assumption that the policyholder is the weaker party economically, and has no option but to accept or reject the insurers’ standard terms. The broad effect of the insurance rules is that the policyholder can only be sued by the insurers in the place of the policyholder’s domicile (art 11), whereas the policyholder has a range of options as to the jurisdiction in which he may sue the insurers (including the domicile of either party – art 8). Contracting out of these rules is permissible only under the most stringent conditions. The question referred to the European Court of Justice by the Cour de Cassation in Société Financière et Industrielle du Peloux v Axa Belgium (Case C-112/03) May 2005, unreported, concerned the scope of the permissible contracting-out rules .