SWEDEN Law and Practice Contributed by: Georgios Eleftheriadis, Hellström Law Firm
• competition law; • torts and extra-contractual damages; • employment law; and • contract law.
purposes of trying regular civil litigation proceedings, in practice what this means is that the Swedish gov- ernment has decided that these same courts also act as the specialist courts for class actions within their respective geographic jurisdictions. The determination of the competent court in each particular case is regulated under Chapter 10 of the Code of Judicial Procedure and is, as is generally the case for class action proceedings in Sweden, no dif- ferent than for regular civil litigation proceedings. In other words, typically speaking, the competent court will be whichever court happens to have jurisdiction over the geographic area of the respondent’s place of residence (ie, forum domicilii), per Chapter 10, Section 1 of the Code of Judicial Procedure. There are, however, options to pursue actions outside of the place of residence of the respondent in cer- tain cases. Examples include the option to pursue an action under the jurisdiction of: • the court where the damage that forms the basis of the action being pursued was caused (Chapter 10, Section 8 of the Code of Judicial Procedure); or • the competent court of the claimant’s place of residence, if the claimant is a consumer (Chapter 10, Section 8a of the Code of Judicial Procedure) ‒ “consumer” in this context referring toa natural person who purchases goods or services for pri- vate use (ie, not in the course of their professional or business activities). Certain types of claims are instead tried under spe- cialist courts ‒ for instance, environmental courts try environmental claims. The course of a class action proceeding as such essentially does not differ from regular civil litigation procedure. All civil litigation procedure in Sweden fol- lows the adversarial principle ‒ that is to say, the courts themselves do not have an investigatory or inquisito- rial role. Actions are initiated by submitting a state- ment of claim to the court (Chapter 42, Section 1 of the Code of Judicial Procedure). One major difference is that the Group Proceedings Act (unlike Swedish civil litigation procedure in general) features rules on
In short, any type of claim that could be pursued under regular Swedish procedure may be pursued as a class action, assuming that the specific procedural require- ments applicable to class actions under the Group Proceedings Act (see 3.2 Overview of Procedure ) are met. 2.3 Definition of Collective Redress/Class Actions The Group Proceedings Act defines class actions under Section 1 as “an action brought by a claimant on behalf of several persons and having legal effects for them, even though they are not parties to the case”. Section 1 of the Group Proceedings Act fur- ther specifies that a class action may be brought as an individual class action, an organisational class action or a public class action (see 3.3 Standing for more detail). Moreover, it defines the “class” as those indi- viduals on behalf of whom the claimant has brought the action. In short, the claim does not need to fulfil any specific criterion beyond relying on circumstances that are held in common between multiple claimants against the same respondent and which could be invoked as a basis for an action. 3. Procedure for Bringing Collective Redress/Class Actions 3.1 Mechanisms for Bringing Collective Redress/Class Actions According to Section 3 of the Group Proceedings Act, the competent courts for class actions are determined specifically by the Swedish government. The govern- ment is required to designate an existing court in each Swedish county as a specialist class action court specifically for that county. The primary method of determining jurisdiction between courts in Sweden is geographic ‒ that is to say, each county is covered by a designated general court. Given that each Swedish county already has a competent general court for the
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