German Railway Station at Basle Case

Date22 Junio 1928
Docket NumberCase No. 90
CourtRegional Court (Germany)
District Labour Court of Karlsruhe.
Case No. 90
German Railway Station at Basle Case.

State Servitudes — Rights in Foreign Territory — German Railway Establishment at Basle — Nature of the Rights Ceded to Germany — Competence of German Courts and German Law in regard to the Railway Establishments of the Federal Railways in Swiss Territory — Extraterritorial Operation of the Public and Private Law of the State.

The Facts.—The Administration of the German section of the railway station at Basle, a branch of the German Federal Railway Company, gave notice of dismissal to one of its workers. The worker in question lodged a complaint against the notice with the Works Council of the railway station at Basle. After abortive negotiations with the Administration of the railway at Basle, the Works Council invoked the Labour Court at Karlsruhe asking for a declaration that the worker's complaint against the notice was justified and that the Federal Railway Administration was bound either to continue the employment or to compensate the worker.1

The defendant Administration pleaded to the jurisdiction of the Court on the ground that the provisions relating to the establishment of Works Councils, and, generally, to the legislation affecting protection of labour, belonged to public law, which had no validity abroad, i.e. in Basle. It contended that the territorial frontier was the necessary limit of the exercise of rights of sovereignty so far as public law was concerned, and that the present case did not therefore fall within the competence of German courts.

Held: That the Court had jurisdiction.

A. Extraterritorial Operation of Public and Private Law.—The legal position of the Works Councils was based on public law. Their rights in connection with the dismissal of workers were given to them for the purpose of protecting the employee by way of action based on public law; in general the Works Councils have been endowed with functions of a public law character. The question of the nature of the legal rules to be applied by a court, namely, whether they are of a private law or a public law nature, is as a rule of decisive importance for the purpose of answering the question of jurisdiction. Jurisdiction in the domain of private law, in particular in so far as it consists merely of the declaration of rights, that is, without aiming at their enforcement, is not bound up with territorial frontiers. The situation is different in regard to rules of a public law nature. They...

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