A former exclusive distributor claimed compensation of € 8.000.000 based on different legal bases including goodwill indemnity and tort.
The supplier claimed that the Greek Courts were not competent due to a valid arbitration clause and that Italian law was the applicable law.
The issue of applicable law was of the essence because goodwill indemnity is not provided by Italian law.
The Court ruled that it had no jurisdiction due to the valid arbitration clause. Specifically, the Court ruled, among others, that:
The validity of the arbitration agreement is independent from the validity of the main agreement, while, also, the arbitration clause may be governed by different applicable law than the one that applies to the main agreement.
Not only the disputes deriving from the interpretation and application of the main agreement, but also tort, as a rule, is subject to arbitration.
The arbitration clause is not against Greek national law only because the foreign applicable legislation is unknown in Greece or because the foreign applicable legislation is against Greek mandatory law.
In the light of the above, the Court rejected former distributor’s lawsuit for lack of jurisdiction.
Nikos Grigoriadis argued for the supplier.
