Factortame Litigation

Factortame Litigation

Introduction

The Factortame court case is of significance importance as it outlined the basis of various pertinent decisions in the law of European Union (EU) and United Kingdom. This case emphasized the superiority of European Union law over the national laws of the countries in which EU competes. The time duration for this case was of ten years in which numerous extensive encounters took place before the final decision was drawn. These debates gave rise to various issues that have importance with regard to the constitution. Two judgments were most important in this context; Factortame I was given in 1990 and Factortame II were given in 1991. The judgment presented in the second appeal put forward at House of Lords is also a component of the United Kingdom's body of Constitutional law (European Law, 2012).

Important Facts

For the purpose of forming a common fisheries market by allowing free access to the sea to all Member States, a Common Fisheries Policy was initiated in 1970 by the EU. In the year 1980, the EU signed an agreement on fisheries with Spain, limiting the rights of the country to access seas of the member states. This raised concerns in 1983 related to the quality of fishing stocks which would get affected by free access. This in turn formulated the concept of 'total allowable catches' and introducing controls that limited the maximum amount of fish which member countries could catch (Weatherill, 2012).

In order to take advantage of the registration requirements mentioned in the Merchant Shipping Act 1984, a company called Factortame Limited, which was owned by Joseph Couceiro, Ken Couceiro and John Couceiro, registered 53, which allowed them to start the practice of 'quota hopping', meaning that they caught the fish in seas of the UK but dropped their catches in their actual country Spain (Munir, 1991).

The British government introduced new Merchant Shipping Act 1988 and also devised Merchant Shipping Regulations (Registration of Fishing Vessels). Under the enforcement of the new system of 1989, the owner could only register the vessel if it proved to have a genuine and significant connect with the UK. This resulted in termination of all the registrations that Factortame had carried out (Turpin & Tomkins, 2011).

Factortame I

Legal Arguments

Factortame wanted a preliminary injunction that declared that no blame should be placed on them for not abiding by the 1988 Act as this would mean that they were being discriminated on the basis of nationality according to article 7 of the Treaty of Rome (Anonymous, 2008). The individuals and companies reserved the right to initiate business anywhere in the EU as they desired, according to article 294 (Anonymous, 2008). The claimants insisted on issuance of an order to prohibit the cessation of all of its registrations by the Secretary of State. The government of UK stated that the new requirements for registration were being applied to ensure that all fishing vessels present in the UK seas had genuine with the country. It conformed to the international law allowing every State to formulate ...