The Constitutional Court Ruled That the Filing of Lawsuits Regarding Legal Liability Arising from Motor Vehicle Accidents Before the Court Where the Insurer’s Headquarters is Located is in Violation to the Principle of Equality and the Right to Legal Remedies

In the case subject to the application, Istanbul 6^th Civil Court of First Instance stated that; almost all of the insurance companies have their headquarters in Istanbul and that, based on the jurisdiction granted by the rule subject to the application, insurance companies prefer the courts located in Istanbul in the lawsuits they file, and that the optional jurisdiction granted has turned into absolute jurisdiction, which restricts the right to legal remedies and makes the judicial activities such as determining the fault status more costly and difficult, the parties to the lawsuit were forced to seek their rights in another province, and that none of the special jurisdiction provisions in the Code of Civil Procedure numbered 6100 and other laws regulating the jurisdiction of the courts regulated a separate jurisdiction for a certain economic group, but the rule subject to objection brought a separate jurisdiction regulation for insurance companies and appealed to the Constitutional Court.

The Constitutional Court ruled that since the headquarters of insurance companies are mostly located in one province, the filing of civil liability cases arising from motor vehicle accidents throughout the country in the same province would increase the workload of the courts, and that although evidence could be collected through the rogatory, this would slow down the proceedings. Moreover, since it is not possible to consider insurance companies as weaker and disadvantaged than the other party, the court ruled that the challenged jurisdiction rule does not have a legitimate purpose and creates different treatment for the insurance company and the other party in terms of the court where the lawsuit will be filed, and ruled that the phrase “headquarter” in Article 110/2 of the Highway Traffic Law is in violation to the principle of equality and the right to legal remedies regulated in the Constitution.

The full text of the Court’s decision published in the Official Gazette dated 18 April 2024 and numbered 31521 is available at this link. (Only available in Turkish)