[Hague-jur-commercial-law] What is different in Article 1 (su bstantive scope) after First Diplomatic Conference?

[Kovar, Jeffrey D (SBU)]

The problems are many.

There are substantial questions whether civil law countries would consider
antitrust actions to be included within scope of the convention anyway,
since they are either brought by the government or arise from statutory
claims.  (Many countries will simply hand the convention over to their
courts without implementing legislation, and the judges are likely to look
at it without the benefit of interpretative guidance.)  Furthermore, treble
damages are unlikely to be enforceable in most countries under the
convention.  In addition, Justice and FTC are concerned that some countries
might deny enforcement on public policy grounds.  

Thus, Justice and FTC believe that there will be little benefit to including
antitrust (i.e., few judgments will be enforced), unless the inclusion could
be made much clearer in Article 1 and Article 10, which other countries are
not inclined to agree to.  On the other hand, Justice and FTC are sure that
if we assume that antitrust is included, defendants will litigate
ferociously the prohibited list to try to get cases against them thrown out
on jurisdictional grounds.  Thus, it will be mostly loss and little gain.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Michael Sondow [SMTP:msondow@iciiu.org]
> Sent:	Monday, July 02, 2001 10:54 PM
> To:	Jeffrey D. Kovar
> Cc:	rms@gnu.org; mress@essential.org;
> Hague-jur-commercial-law@venice.essential.org
> Subject:	Re: [Hague-jur-commercial-law] What is different in Article
> 1 (substantive scope) after First	Diplomatic Conference?
> 
> Jeffrey D. Kovar wrote:
> > 
> > It is Justice Dept and FTC antitrust offices who are insisting that
> > antitrust be excluded from the convention.  They are the major
> litigators
> > in this area.
> 
> What are their reasons? How do they justify it? And what do they use
> to convince the other treaty states having antitrust laws?
> 
> M.S.