The “LKW-Walter” ruling by the ECJ

In brief, the judgment of the CJEU of 7 July 2022 (C-7/21) was based on the fact that, in an Austrian-Slovenian constellation, the Slovenian courts had deemed an objection lodged from Austria against a Slovenian payment order to be untimely. In this case, the Slovenian courts had based the start of the objection period on the day of service in Austria and thus disregarded the one-week period under Art. 8 EUZVO 2007 when calculating the very short eight-day objection period. Calculated from the date of service, the objection lodged by Austrian lawyers was then also time-barred. The Slovenian courts adhered to their calculation method throughout all instances. The case was only referred to the European Court of Justice in the context of lawyers’ liability proceedings.

With regard to the ultimately only relevant question referred for a preliminary ruling, namely whether the one-week time limit under Art. 8 EUTMR 2007 suspends national time limits for appeals, the ECJ made the following findings in particular:

’35 That possibility of refusing to accept the document to be served constitutes a right of the addressee of that document (judgment of September 6, 2018, Catlin Europe, C 21/17, EU:C:2018:675, paragraph 32 and the case-law cited). The addressee may exercise that right when the document is served or within one week, provided that he returns the document within that period.”

“36 It is also apparent from the case-law of the Court that that right to refuse to accept a document to be served makes it possible to protect the rights of the defense of the addressee of that document, in compliance with the requirements of a fair trial laid down in Article 47(2) of the Charter. Even if Regulation No 1393/2007 is primarily intended to improve the effectiveness and speed of judicial proceedings and to ensure the proper administration of justice, those objectives cannot be achieved by compromising in any way the effective protection of the rights of the defense of the addressees of the documents concerned (see, to that effect, judgment of 6 September 2018, Catlin Europe, C 21/17, EU:C:2018:675, paragraph 33 and the case-law cited).”

“41 The practical effectiveness of the right to refuse to accept a document to be served presupposes, first, that the addressee has been informed of the existence of that right and, second, that he has the full period of one week to assess whether he should accept or refuse to accept the document and, in the event of refusal, to return it.”

’45 However, the objective pursued by Article 8(1) of Regulation No 1393/2007, which is to avoid any discrimination between those two categories of addressees, requires that addressees who receive the document in a language other than that referred to in that provision be able to exercise their right to refuse to accept that document without suffering any procedural disadvantage in view of their cross-border situation.

“46 Consequently, if the document to be served is not drawn up in or translated into one of the languages referred to in this provisionthe period of one week provided for in Article 8(1) of Regulation No 1393/2007 shall not begin to run at the same time as the period prescribed for lodging an appeal under the legislation of the Member State to which the authority which issued the document belongs belongs as otherwise the practical effectiveness of this provision in conjunction with Article 47 of the Charter would be impaired. On the contrary, the period for lodging an appeal must, in principle, begin to run after the expiry of the period of one week provided for in Article 8(1) of Regulation No 1393/2007.”