BAHR’s Dispute Resolution Team sums up 2019

In 2019, the Supreme Court of Norway handed down several noteworthy rulings regarding key topics of civil procedural law. In particular, the rulings on Norwegian jurisdiction in international disputes, choice of law, disclosure of evidence and legal privilege received broad attention. BAHR has published newsletters on these rulings on a running basis, but we have collated the newsletters here to put the decisions into context.

International Jurisdiction

The international jurisdiction of the Norwegian courts and the Lugano Convention Article 6 (1) were discussed by the Supreme Court in the case HR-2019-2206-A. The ruling provides important clarifications on the requirements for adjoining claims and foreign co-defendants, as referred to in our newsletter.

In HR-2019-1577-U the Supreme Court discussed the rules on special jurisdiction of the Lugano Convention Article 5 (3), which must be interpreted restrictively, as commented here.

Choice of Law

In HR-2019-1929-A, the Supreme Court placed significant emphasis on the solution provided by the Rome I regulation, despite the fact that the regulation is not binding on Norway and not part of Norwegian law. The Supreme Court thereby upheld the trend of emphasizing the conflict of laws rules in the EU and ensuring that the choice of law was made in accordance with “firmer” principles, thus ensuring a higher level of predictability than the traditional “Irma Mignon” formula. The ruling is commented here.

Disclosure of Evidence

In HR-2019-997-A the Supreme Court ruled on the requirements for disclosure of evidence. Important clarifications were provided on the conditions of relevance, specification and proportionality of evidence. The Supreme Court maintained that disclosure of evidence under Norwegian law is not discovery as per English and US law. We commented on the ruling here.

Legal Privilege

In the rulings HR-2019-2168-U and HR-2019-2262-U the Supreme Court confirmed that the protection of attorney and client communication extended to information obtained by the attorney as part of the assignment. We have commented on the ruling here: New Supreme Court Ruling: Draft testimonies comprised by attorney-client privilege and Attorney-client privilege for information included in contract with third parties upheld by Norwegian Supreme Court.

Please visit here for more newsletters.