In his opinion rendered on April 25th, 2013 (in Case C-9/12), Advocate General Jääskinen cited a paper by Professor Franco Ferrari, the Executive Director of the Law School’s Center for Transnational Litigation, Arbitration and Commercial Law to show the status of the law on a given issue. Advocate General Jääskinen rendered his Opinion in relation to a preliminary ruling, from a Belgian court, concerning mainly the interpretation of the rule of special jurisdiction laid down in relation to contractual matters in Article 5(1)(a) and (b) of Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters, usually referred to as ‘the Brussels I Regulation’. More specifically, the Court of Justice of the European Union was asked to rule whether a distribution agreement, pursuant to which one party purchases goods from another party in one Member State for resale in the territory of another Member State, is to be classified as ‘sale of goods’ or ‘provision of services”. In getting to its conclusion, the Advocate General relied on a paper by Professor Ferrari excluding that distribution contracts can be compared to “sales of goods”, at least under the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.
