Recent Case Law

In this section authors from various European countries report the recent case law in their country on the field of private patrimonial law, that is decisions on the law of property, juridical acts, the law of obligations, contract law and prescription. The European Review of Private Law (ERPL) started this section in 2003. The section aims to give our readers an overview of what is happening in the most recent European case law. We have asked the national reporters to report the juridical essence of the decisions given by the highest courts in their country. These national reports are integrated in one general report that arranges the decisions by subject, so that our readers can easily find out whether decisions on their special interest were given in any European country or whether decisions on one subject have been taken in various European countries. In principle, this section does not relate the facts of the decision, nor the personal opinion of the reporter. One can find discussions on the most important decisions of European courts in ERPL’s case note section.The recent case law section gives overviews of decisions published in periods of four months. The period of January-April is published in the fourth issue, the period from May to August is published in the sixth issue, and the period from September to December is published in the second issue of the next year. In this issue, we publish decisions of high courts taken from September to December 2003. As yet, some decisions can only be found on the internet. Therefore, at the end of this section we have listed web sites where one can find European high court decisions. The Board of Editors of the ERPL wants to thank the national contributors to this report, who worked very hard to have their reports ready in time. Further, the Board considers itself very fortunate that Mr. Ross MacDonald (University of Dundee, Scotland) has been willing to edit the contributions and, by doing so, contribute substantially to the quality of this section.