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Protection of Diffuse, Fragmented and Collective Interests in Civil Litigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2009

H.U. Jessurun d'Oliveira
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Extract

This is the national report for the Netherlands on the above-named topic for the VIIth International Congress on Procedural Law, Würzburg September 1983. General reporters for this subject are Prof. Dr. Mauro Cappelletti (European University Institute, Florence) and Prof. Dr. Bryant Garth (Indiana University, Bloomington). In their introductory note to the national reporters they focus their attention on “how the legal system is or is not adapting to the problem of the representation of diffuse interests and more generally (on) the problem of the vindication of these rights”.

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Articles
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Netherlands International Law Review , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , August 1983 , pp. 161 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © T.M.C. Asser Press 1983

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References

1. Act of 3 December 1932, Staatsblad 577.

2. Van den Dungen and Meyer, Burgerlijke Rechtsvordering [Civil Procedure] Comment 1 on Book I, chapter 5, and comment at Article 322 CCP.

3. Cf., Groenendijk, , Bundeling van belangen bij de burgerlijke rechter [The Aggregation of interests in civil proceedings], 1981, p. 359Google Scholar.

4. See the reports by Duisterwinkel and Mostert, Nederlandse Juristen Vereniging [Dutch Law Association] 1968, with the survey (now obsolete) by Lukács (p. 360 et seq) on the roleof the OM in civil proceedings.

5. However, it is generally assumed that the OM is not obliged to be represented by counsel. F.M.J. Jarisen Van den Dungen and Jansen, op. cit. comment 2 on article 133 and 59reveals that the expertise in civil procedure attributed to the OM is a myth. In his opinion “the OM is given to the most wondrous antics in the court room, and it obviously feels like the proverbial fish out of water, not to mention the fact that the courts time and again are kind enough to cover the many mistakes made by the OM in the course of the proceedings with the cloak of charity… ” (NJB [Dutch Law Review] 1978, p. 219).

6. See 52 NJB (1977) p. 1014, and Jansen, ibid. (1978) p. 219–220.

7. But appeal in cassation does lie: article 2.338 C.C.

8. Groenendijk, , supra n. 3, p. 180Google Scholar.

9. Loc. cit. p. 180. From a short report by the President of the Company Division it appears that the P.G. submitted a request for an inquiry for the first time in 1981: 57 NJB (1982) p. 579.

10. “Mais pour le moment, le ministère public n'est pas une alternative réette ou même un appui pour L'intérét public, défendu dans des causes civiles par ‘des ideological plaintiffs’. Comment serait-ce possible? Presque par nécessité, il s'identifie si bien avec les pouvoirs publics qu'il lui est trés difficile – en cas de conflits qui surgissent précisément parce que les pouvoirs publics s'en détournent – de prendre systématiquement position contre les institutions avec lesquelles il a I 'habitude de marcher de concert. Le principal objectifdu ministire public est la défense des pouvoirs publics et non la defense contre ceux-ci. Et les pouvoirs publics ne sont-ils pas à I'affût comme co-défendeurs silencieux dans les actions écologiaues dirigées contre d'autres qu'eux-mêmes?”: Jessurun d'Oliveira, La pollution duRhin et le droit international privé dans: Rhine Pollution/La pollution du Rhin, aspects juridiques, économiques et techniques (1978), p. 88

10a. Cf. Rb. Breda, 15 02 1982, Nederlandse Jurisprudentie [Dutch Law Reports] 1983, 6Google Scholar (Uniser-case), also in Milieu en Recht [Environment and Law] 1983, p. 115 with note P.J.P. Tak; the Booij-Clean-case and the recent discoveries on the lack of authorisations of the state enterprise D.S.M. (a chemical industry), the pollution caused by this firm and the knowledge about this state of affairs on the part of the authorities.

11. Singer, H.M. – Dekker, , “Tien jaar verslagen van het OM.” [Ten years of reporting by the OM], 3 Rechtsgeleerd Magazijn Themis (1982) pp. 116–132Google Scholar.

12. See Articles 95 and 96 of the Judicature Act [Wet op de Rechterlijke Organisatie

13. d'Oliveira, H.U. Jessurun, Kassatie in het belang van het recht [Cassation in the interest of law], in: Speculum Langemeijer (1973),.p. 226Google Scholar.

14. Veegens, , Cassatie [Cassation], 1971 2, p. 283Google Scholar.

15. The President of the Adjudicatory Division of the State Council is of the opinion that the Minister of Justice has no right to order the PG at the Hoge Raad to submit a case for cassation in the interest of law: 12 December 1978, Nederlandse Jurisprudentie [Dutch Law Reports].

16. According to his farewell address, 55 NJB (1980) p. 518.

17. Cf., D'Oliveira, , loc. cit. p. 238Google Scholar.

18. For example, the former Presidents of the Hoge Raad, Wiarda and Dubbink, have advocated the extension of this institution. 1 Handelingen Nederlandse Juristenvereniging [Reports of the Dutch Law Association] (1978) p. 99, and vol. 2, p. 16; Groenendijk, , loc. cit. p. 394Google Scholar.

19. Cf. D'Oliveira, , De meerwaarde van rechterlijke uitspraken (arrêts de règlement en precedenten) (The surplus value of judicial decisions, arrêts de reglement and precedents), Report for the Dutch Association of Comparative Law 1973Google Scholar.

20. Speculum Langemeijer, supra n. 13, p. 239.

21. Loc.cit. p. 101.

22. Loc. cit. p. 108.

23. To my surprise, the condition that “the decisions appealed from must be judgments against which cassation in the interest of law is the exclusive remedy” is included in these criteria. If this condition is not fulfilled the appeal may not be lodged at all.

24. Ibid. p. 518.

25. See Hoogendijk-Deutsch, , Groepsacties en algemeen belong in de administratiefrechtelijke procedure (Group Actions and Public Interest in Administrative Litigation), Report for the Dutch Law Association vol. 1, (1976) p. 61Google Scholar.

26. This was one of the reasons why the Reinwater Foundation decided against requesting the P.G. to submit the case to the Hoge Raad for cassation in the interest of law, after it was told it had no standing to sue the French Potassium Mines for tortious salt pollution of the Rhine (by the District Court of Rotterdam 8 January 1979, NJ 1979, 113 An Aequi (1980) p. 788–794 with annotation by D'Oliveira, )Google Scholar.

27. Staatsblad 1981, no. 35.

28. Second Chamber, session 1981–1982, Document 17 364, nos. 1–2.

29. Verburgh, M.J.P., Privaatrecht en collectief belong (Private Law and Collective Interest) (1974) p. 15Google Scholar.

30. Groenendijk, , loc. cit. p. 308–309Google Scholar.

30a. See Groenendijk, loc. cit., chapter VIII.

31. See, most recently, Hoge Raad 5 06 1981, NJ 1982, 221: in this case a liability insurer on behalf of the party who was liable tried to induce the court to elaborate on the exact meaning of article 1406 CC.

32. President of the Haarlem District Court 30 June 1972, Bouwrecht (1972) p. 419.

33. Hoge Raad 29 March 1974, NJ 1974, 344. See about this case: Groenendijk, op. cit. p. 67, listing other commentsGoogle Scholar.

33a. To complement its total legal services, the Consumers Union provides its members with legal assistance in litigation, especially when the interests at stake are not exclusively individual member's interests but those of the consumer generally as well, according to the Consumentengids of 06 1982, p. 268–269. In 1981, 45 new cases were accepted, half of which concerned non-compliance with a quasi-arbitral decision called bindend advies [binding recommendation] on the part of suppliers. In 1981, 24 cases were decided in court, 18 of which the consumers won, 6 of which they lost. In the same year, 18 cases were brought to an end out of court, 11 of which were settled in favor of the consumer. The legal counseling service of the Union, reserved to its members, received in 1981 a total of 17,000 letters and 32,500 telephone calls.

34. Loc. cit. p. 181.

35. See District Court of The Hague 23 October 1974, NJ 1975, 115. Cf. Verburgh, , 2 Handelingen NJV (1975) p. 33Google Scholar: “Klassiek privaatrechtelijke versluiering van publieke belangen” [Classic instances of concealment of public interests by private law]

36. District Court of Zutphen 26 June 1980, NJ 1981,29.

37. See for examples: Groenendijk, , op. cit. p. 110–118Google Scholar.

38. See Article 30 A Copyright Act, promulgated in 1932 in pursuance of which article the BUMA was chartered by Decree of the Minister of Justice 24 March 1933 (Staatscourant 1933, 60).

39. It was founded in 1974. This foundation has not been able to achieve its goals by means of private law. See Final Report of the Committee on Collection, Administration and Repartition of Copyright Payments (May 1982), advocating the establishment of a monopolyorganization with a right of collection of its own.

40. Staatsblad 1980, 304, in effect since 14 July 1980.

41. P. 14.

42. Drion, Compare and Martens, , Onrechtmatige Daad [Torts] VI, no. 62a and the writings listed thereGoogle Scholar, to which Groenendijk, , op. cit., p. 258 et seq. should be addedGoogle Scholar.

43. Altematieve Procesdidactiek (Alternative procedural didactics), in: Non Sine Causa, Essays in honour of G.J. Scholten (1979), p. 441.

44. See Vriesendorp, 54 NJB (1979) p. 763.

45. See Elders, , The Use of Conciliation for Dispute Settlement in Dutch Civil Procedure, in: D'Oliveira, (ed.), Netherlands Reports to the Xth International Congress of Comparative Law, Budapest 1978, p. 159–170Google Scholar.

46. See Van den Dungen and Jansen, supra note 2, comment 3 to article 19, who calls this development ‘not altogether unobjectionable’ and then bursts into a series of vituperations. See also the report on a distressing debate in the Netherlands Association for Procedural Law about the ‘hearing after answering-briefs’ proceedings, 55 NJB (1980) p. 34.

47. See D'Oliveira, , Ars Aequi 1980, p. 788–794Google Scholar.

48. Illustrative in this respect was the case law on divorce (now obsolete because of statutory revisions) in which the ‘great lie’ [grote leugen] played an important part. When our Civil Code (Article 236 former version) prohibited consensual divorce many suits for divorce were founded on adultery, with the defendant (husband) acquiescing or simply allowing the judgmentto go by default. From this procedural behaviour the incontestability of the ground for divorce was inferred. This practice was condoned by the Hoge Raad in a decision of 22 June 1883, Weekblad 4924, and survived for a little less than a century, until the grounds for divorce were broadened by statute in 1971.

49. Hoge Raad 16 December 1977, NJ 1978, 561 (Hiep v. AMRO-Bank) and Hoge Raad 2 November 1979, NJ 1980, 154 (Knol v. De Merel).

50. See Ingelse, P., De werking van rechterlijke uitspraken tegen derden. De buitenparlementaire acties van het gerechtshof te Amsterdam [The effect of judicial decisions as against third parties. The extraparliamentary action of the Appellate Court of Amsterdam], 57 NJB (1982) pp. 65–74Google Scholar. See also the auctor intellectualis of these decisions, Kingma, W., in 57 NJB (1982) p. 437 with a postscript by Ingelse, P.Google Scholar.

50a. Hoge Raad 14 January 1983, NJ 1983, 267, with note W.H.H. See about this decision: Stein, 58 NJB (1983) p. 202.

51. Cf. Groenendijk, , loc. cit. p. 363Google Scholar.

52. See, e.g., President of the Arnhem District Court 20 February 1972, NJ 1972, 327.

53. Since the plaintiffs wanted a judgment ordering the Potassium Mines to pay damages to theextent that these had been caused by the Potassium Mines themselves, the summons of other parties in indemnification was denied.

53a. See however a preliminary draft of a Benelux uniform law on the position of the victim in the criminal process. Comments.by N.J. Polak, 55 NJB (1980) pp. 21–32.

54. See Hoogenboom, Van den Biesen and, De Leegstandswet [The Unoccupied Buildings Act], 56 NJB (1981) pp. 821–834Google Scholar.

55. Article 4, sub 12 C.C.P. (newest version). This Article has not come yet into effect.

55a. See Lodeizen-Schoonenberg, 57 NJB (1982) p. 224.

56. See for these data: Blaauw, 56 NJB (1981) pp. 329–337.

57. See Van Nispen, Het rechtertijk verbod en bevel [Judicial Orders and Injunctions] (1978); and Blaauw, Executiemiddelen, de sanctionnering van vonnissen, veroordelend tot eenandere prestatie dan het hebben van geld [Means of enforcement, enforcement of judgments other than money judgments], Report to the Netherlands Association for Comparative Law 1980; as well as Van den Dungen and Jansen, supra n. 2, comment to Article 611a CCP. et seq.

57a. In fact this is uniform Benelux law. The rules in regard of the dwangsom derive from the Benelux Treaty of 26 November 1973 (Tractatenblad 1974, 6) containing a uniform Act concerning the astreinte or dwangsom. These rules have been enacted in the Netherlands by the Act of 23 March 1977, Staatsblad 184. Eventually these rules will be transferred from the Code of Civil Procedure to the Civil Code (Book 3 New Civil Code, article 3.11.ff.)

58. A celebrated example is District Court of The Hague 29 April 1963, NJ 1963, 240. The President of the Court ordered the Dutch State to move 14 South Moluccans from New Guinea to the Netherlands, as, in connection with the transfer of this territory to Indonesia, the South Moluccans rightly feared for their lives because they had been active as informers for the Dutch government. As far as the dwangsom was concerned, the President felt that as a rule “the award of a dwangsom asagainst the government is not called for, since the government might be expected to comply with judicial orders”. In this case, however, the President was not so sure, and so as to “save the government from the temptation to assume too readily that a dwangsom could not be enforced against it”, he imposed a dwangsom of Dfl. 50,000 per plaintiff.

59. Cf. Blaauw, , supran. 57, p. 12Google Scholar, pointing out a decision of the Amsterdam Appellate Court 10 May 1979, NJ 1980, 369, in which an injunction to refrain from delivering certain goods was reinforced with a dwangsom of 4 million guilders in case of non-compliance. See also Amsterdam Appellate Court 17 January 1980, NJ 1981, 242 (dwangsom of Dfl. 100,000 for each day of failure to perform imposed on a department store in behalf of the City of Utrecht). Recently the Leeuwarden Appellate Court 7 April 1982 NJ 1983, p. 406 condemned defendant to pay to the plaintiffs a forfeited dwangsom of Dfl. 18,000,000.

59a. Enschedé, E.M., Report to the Dutch Law Association, (1976), p. 172Google Scholar.

60. Sindell v.Abbott Laboratories 26 Cal. 3d 588, 607 P. 2d 924,… Cal. Rptr. 132, cert, denied (1980), and the discussion of this case by Knottenbelt, 57 NJB (1982) pp. 185–193.

61. According to article 64 of the Air Pollution Act 1970.

62. See Veegens, , Het gezag van gewijsde [The binding force of judicial decisions] (1972), para. 14Google Scholar.

63. Cf. D'Oliveira, , supra n. 19Google Scholar.

64. Cf. Groenendijk, supra n. 3, and the cases and materials listed there.

65. District Court Arnhem 18 December 1973, NJ 1974, 65.

66. Appellate Court Arnhem 23 December 1974, NJ 1976,65.

66a. NJ (1983) 267; see above II under c.

67. Privaatrecht en coUectief belong [Private law and collective interests] (1974) p. 58

68. Accord: Enschedé, , supra n. 59 a, p. 178Google Scholar. Compare also: Groenendijk, , op. cit. p. 392 et seqGoogle Scholar.

69. Especially in her article ” Rechtshulp 1970–1980: politieke aktie of gat in de murkt?” [Legal Aid 1970–1980: Political Action or a Gap in the Market? ] 55 NJB (1980) pp. 149–157Google Scholar. See also: id., Hebben de rechtswinkels nog toekomst [ Do the Law Shops still have a Future?] in: 10 Jaar Rechtswinkelwerk… en nu [Ten Years of Law Shopkeeping… what now?] (1981) p. 3–7.

70. ”De balie, een leemte in de rechtshulp?” [The Bar, A Gap in Legal Aid?], 19 Ais Aequi (1970).

71. Formerly, the bar was financially responsible for indigent litigants.

72. It has been calculated that approximately 60% of the Dutch population “is eligible for legal aid”, says Van Manen, , De rechtshulpverleners [The Legal Aid Providers] (1978) p. 183Google Scholar.

73. According to art. 9 WROM and the regulations pursuant thereto, families with a net monthly income of less than Hfl. 2000 are entitled to free legal aid. Beyond that amount they have to pay an increasing contribution (e.g. a contribution of Hfl. 4,000 when the net monthly income amounts to Hfl. 2,375). The new scheme saves Hfl. 8 million annually, according to an official estimate. Cf. Blaisse, De toevoegingsnormen van de WROM (The assignment criteria of the WROM) 3 Rechtshulp (1981) p. 21 et seqGoogle Scholar.

74. Prakken, , loc. cit. p. 156Google Scholar.

75. See in this respect: de Roos, Th., De weg naar de Wet op de Rechtshulp [The Road to the Legal Aid Act], 55 NJB (1980) pp. 465–474Google Scholar.

76. Preliminary draft, p. 39–40.

77. To wit: p. 397.

78. De Roos, , loc. cit. p. 467Google Scholar.

79. Previously yet these attorneys had been denied admission to the bar by the Dutch Bar Association.

80. Document 17.100, no. 1.

81. See Andiinga, Len and others, Het Bureau voor Rechtshulp in beeld,[The Legal Aid Office the Picture] University of Amsterdam, 12 1981Google Scholar; Niels van Manen, supra n. 72.