61998O0437

European Court reports 1999 Page I-07145

Keywords

1 Procedure - Decision given by reasoned order - Conditions - Action manifestly inadmissible or manifestly lacking any foundation in law - Where the pleas in law have already been considered in an earlier case or are manifestly unfounded

(Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, Art. 111)

2 Appeals - Pleas in law - Plea put forward for the first time at the stage of the appeal - Inadmissible

(EC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51)

3 Appeals - Pleas in law - Whether the Court of Justice may review the appraisal of the evidence - Possible only where the clear sense of the evidence has been distorted

(EC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51)

4 Procedure - Procedure before the Court of First Instance - Reassignment of a case to a Chamber composed of a lower number of Judges - Permissible

(Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, Art. 14)

Summary

1 Under Article 111 of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, where an action is manifestly inadmissible or manifestly lacking any foundation in law, that Court may give a decision on the action by reasoned order, without taking any further steps in the proceedings. Where, in an action for annulment of a Commission decision, the Court of First Instance finds that the merits of five of the six pleas in law put forward by the applicant have already been appraised in an earlier judgment in which the Court of Justice confirmed the validity of the same decision, and that the sixth plea is manifestly unfounded, it may properly, in application of Article 111 of its Rules of Procedure, hold that the action is manifestly unfounded.

2 A plea in law raised for the first time in appeal proceedings before the Court of Justice must be dismissed as inadmissible. To allow a party to put forward in an appeal a plea which it has not raised at first instance would mean allowing that party to bring before the Court of Justice, whose jurisdiction in appeals is limited, a case of wider scope than the one heard by the Court of First Instance. In an appeal, the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice is thus confined to examining the assessment by the Court of First Instance of the pleas argued before it.

3 The appraisal by the Court of First Instance of the evidence put before it does not constitute a point of law which is subject to review by the Court of Justice in the context of an appeal, save where the sense of that evidence has been distorted or the substantive inaccuracy of the Court of First Instance's findings is apparent from the documents in the case-file.

4 Article 14 of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, under which a case may be referred to the Court of First Instance sitting in plenary session or to a Chamber composed of a different number of judges whenever this is justified by the legal difficulty or the importance of the case or special circumstances, is designed to allow cases to be heard by the Court of First Instance in the composition which is the most appropriate in the circumstances, in accordance with the criteria laid down in that provision. Neither the wording nor the purpose of that provision supports the conclusion that it precludes a reassignment of the case, where appropriate, to a bench composed of a lower number of Judges. That interpretation is confirmed in particular by the use in the provision of the word `different`.