Supreme Court ruled on international jurisdiction and transitional provisions of the WAMCA
Civil law
In two class actions concerning diesel engines, the Supreme Court ruled on the interna-tional jurisdiction of the Dutch courts. According to the Supreme Court, for the Dutch courts to have jurisdiction under Article 8(1) of the Brussels I-bis Regulation, it is not re-quired that the group of beneficiairies on whose behalf the foundation is bringing its claims against the foreign car manufacturers must be identical to, or form part of, the group of beneficiaries on whose behalf the foundation is bringing its claims against the Dutch im-porter (in this case, the anchor defendant). It is sufficient that there is such a close link between the foundation’s claims against the car manufacturers and its claims against the importer that the proper administration of justice requires them to be heard and deter-mined simultaneously, in order to avoid incompatible decisions being handed down if the cases were to be heard separately. The Supreme Court saw no reason to refer preliminary questions to the CJEU.
In addition, the Supreme Court ruled on the transitional provisions of the WAMCA. The WAMCA came into force on 1 January 2020. The transitional provisions in the WAMCA stipulate that, for a legal claim aimed at protecting similar interests of the beneficiaries and brought on or after 1 January 2020, the conditions applicable prior to that date remain in force in so far as the claim relates to events that took place before 15 November 2016. The Supreme Court ruled that, in a case where the claim relates both to events that took place before 15 November 2016 and to events that took place on or after 15 November 2016, the claim must be split. The Supreme Court considered that the term ‘events’ refers to facts that form the basis of a claim organisation’s claim in a class action. In this regard, the court must take as its starting point the arguments put forward by the claim organisa-tion, whilst also taking into account any challenges to those arguments raised by the de-fendant.
ECLI:NL:HR:2026:1551 (in Dutch)
ECLI:NL:HR:2026:1552 (in Dutch)
Relevance of consumer organisations’ involvement in the assessment of general terms and conditions
Civil law
The 2013 General Terms and Conditions for the Contract for Works, adopted by Bouwend Nederland (the Dutch association of construction and infrastructure companies), contain a clause under which the consumer forfeits their rights against the contractor in respect of defects in the property if the consumer does not serve a writ on the contractor within the period specified in the clause. The Supreme Court ruled that, when assessing whether a clause in general terms and conditions is unreasonably onerous (as referred to in Article 6:233, preamble and under (a), of the Dutch Civil Code) or unfair (as referred to in Di-rective 93/13), the fact that a similar clause appears in other general terms and conditions, drawn up in consultation with consumer organisations, is also of significance.
ECLI:NL:HR:2026:1556 (in Dutch)
Supreme Court strengthened protection of the right to refuse to give evidence in digital investigations
Criminal law
The case centred on a dataset comprising millions of files which had been filtered under the supervision of the examining judge in order to keep potentially confidential communi-cations with lawyers out of the reach of the Public Prosecution Service. The Supreme Court has now made it clear that lawyers may challenge the investigating judge’s decision to grant the Public Prosecution Service access to the remaining data following such filter-ing. Not only can the final decision on whether the Public Prosecution Service is to be granted access be challenged, but also the manner in which the filtering and selection of digital data took place. In doing so, the Supreme Court once again underlined the funda-mental importance of the right to legal privilege.
ECLI:NL:HR:2026:1490 (in Dutch)