Yahoo Finance Brexit cases are already piling up reveals European Court of Justice boss
Brexit-related cases are already piling up in the in-tray of the European Court of Justice and there will be many more "beyond the wildest imagination" of lawyers, the president of the EU's top court has said.
Koen Lenaerts, who runs the Luxembourg-based court, said: "The brexit cases will come and they will come from the most unexpected angle you could imagine"
"There are already Brexit cases pending," the Belgian judge said, "national courts start now bringing cases where aspects of brexit start popping up".
"Even the wildest imagination will fall short," he added, "I would never have thought first mention of Brexit in a European case would be a trade mark case".
The European Court of Justice (ECJ )will hear an appeal on the EU trademark involving British company Alcohol International. A rival company wants the trade mark annulled because Britain is leaving the EU.
Mr Lenaerts said another pending case involved a European Arrest Warrant issued by Britain for a suspect in Ireland. The warrant was being challenged because the sentence given to the man would run past the 29 March 2019 Brexit deadline.
The ECJ is obliged by law to decide on all cases brought to it so it is also likely to hear a case brought by five British expats in the Netherlands. They have argued that they have independent rights as EU citizens, over and above being citizens of any specific EU member country - including Britain – and they face losing them because of Brexit. On Thursday, the Dutch state appealed an Amsterdam court’s decision to refer the case to the ECJ.
At a press conference in Brussels, Marc Jaeger, the French president of the EU's General Court, a lower court to the ECJ, said there was a case pending brought by 12 EU citizens challenging the legality of the Brexit negotiations.
The case questions the legal right of the European Council to have begun Brexit negotiations in the first place on convoluted grounds such as Britain's membership of the Euratom atomic energy agreement.
Mr Jaeger also revealed that a company had made an application to trade mark the word Brexit at the European Union Intellectual Property Office in Alicante, Spain.
The ECJ is the supreme arbiter of EU law and national courts in the bloc refer cases to it for decision on points of EU law. Those clarifications set legal precedents and must be followed by national judges.
Ending the supremacy of the ECJ over British courts is one of Britain's Brexit red lines but Mrs May has conceded the court will continue to have some indirect influence after Brexit.
Britain will lose its representation in the court after the 29 March 2019 deadline but will continue to follow its rulings during the transition period that lasts until 2021.
