Franco Ferrari's paper cited by German high court in opinion

Photo of Franco FerrariThe Federal Court of Justice of Germany cited a paper by Franco Ferrari, a longtime visiting professor who will join the NYU School of Law faculty full time this September, in a decision concerning the interpretation of a choice of law provision in an international sales contract between a German buyer and an English seller. Ferrari, faculty director of the Law School's Center for Transnational Litigation and Commercial Law, is an expert on international sales law.

The court was faced with deciding whether the application of German law under the choice of law provision amounted to an implicit exclusion of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG), which establishes a uniform international sales law and has been ratified by more than 70 countries, including Germany. In writing its May 11 opinion, the court relied on a paper by Ferrari in asserting that the choice of German law did not evidence the parties' intent to exclude the CISG.

In a separate case involving the CISG, a German court of first instance used the same paper by Ferrari in ruling on what rules should apply to determine the validity of an exclusion of the CISG by means of standard contract terms. In its June 22 decision, the court echoed Ferrari's view that the rules of the CISG itself should apply.

Posted on July 20, 2010