FR Lurssen Werft GmbH & Co KG v Halle [2009] EWHC 2607 (Comm), [2009] All ER (D) 33 (Nov)
Under Art 3.1 of the Rome Convention, a contract was governed by the law chosen by the parties. In the absence of a choice of law, the law governing a contract was determined in accordance with Art 4 of the Convention. The court should consider whether there was a real, albeit implicit, choice of law which was demonstrated with reasonable certainty by all the circumstances of the case.
Article 4.1 provided that a contract was to be governed by the law of the country with which it was most closely connected. The Convention was an international convention and should be interpreted on the basis of an “autonomous” rather than a particular national or English law approach.
Its interpretation and its application to facts should be the same in all states who were party to the Convention, which involved a purposive approach to interpretation rather than a narrow or literal approach.
A court should not strain to find a choice of law where none existed. Article 3 provided
