The Civil Division

Civil Section breakdown

In 2025, the Supreme Court answered various questions referred for a preliminary ruling by District Courts and Courts of Appeal in the context of the formation and uniformity of law. These questions concerned the qualification of an agreement as an employment contract (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:319), unequal treatment of men and women when pregnancy and maternity leave coincided with 'other days' (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:320), requests for access to files of often long-completed family and juvenile proceedings (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:723), the procedure for determining maintenance costs for young adults (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:724), the unfairness of a cost of legal proceedings clause (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:820), inheritance law and guardianship (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:758), the position of children in the event of eviction from a rented property (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1799), the legal position of a director of a Curaçao company in view of liability for tax debts (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1657) and the role of the court in placing a minor in a foster family (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1948).

One of these decisions deals with the question of whether adults can be granted access to the files of past family and juvenile proceedings concerning them (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:723).  To this the Supreme Court replied that Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights entails that the State must provide for a procedure by which a person in respect of whom child protection measures have been taken in the past can have access to relevant information to know and understand their childhood and early development. While there are now legal ways to obtain certain information (such as decisions in closed proceedings), that does not mean that someone can always obtain all the relevant information. It is up to the legislature to make choices on how to set up an effective and accessible procedure for this.

The position of children was further addressed when answering questions on eviction of homes in which children also live. The Supreme Court held in this regard that under Article 3(1) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the court must take into account the interests of the child. The court must therefore examine whether the claimed eviction will also affect children and what is in their interest in the circumstances.

Some questions referred for a preliminary ruling to the Supreme Court gave rise to a dialogue with the Court of Justice of the European Union. For instance, to answer questions referred to it for a preliminary ruling, the Supreme Court in turn referred questions for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1081 on the payment of legal costs clause and ECLI:NL:HR:2025:945 on the applicable law for cartel damages claims). And sometimes the Court of Justice's answers to questions referred for a preliminary ruling led to answers to questions referred for a preliminary ruling by a District Court to the Supreme Court (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1008 on the possibility of payment in arrears in a web shop).

It was noteworthy in 2025 that a good number of decisions of the Civil Division concerned cases related to criminal law or criminal proceedings. This concerned, among other things, a claim for damages in respect of the same set of facts that are the subject of a criminal case (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:796), issues of enforcement in the Netherlands of a sentence imposed in another country (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:88 and 89), applicability of civil-law provisions on fraud and error in relation to a criminal transaction (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:898), the right to an oral hearing on appeal after rejection of a claim by an injured party in criminal proceedings (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1153) and extradition law (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:166, 592, 664 and 1950). At the same time, the Criminal Division is increasingly answering questions of civil law, sometimes with members of the Civil Division on the panel as well and sometimes following an advisory opinion by an Advocate General from the Procurator General's office. In 2025 for example, this involved the question of whether a person who is unconscious is entitled to compensation for pain and suffering (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1055 and ECLI:NL:PHR:2025:483).

Furthermore, in 2025, the Supreme Court made its first decisions in cases concerning the Settling of Large-scale Losses or Damage (Class Actions) Act (WAMCA) (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:321 and ECLI:NL:HR:2025:388).

Decisions that attracted media attention included the decision on providing free contraception for women over 18 (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:321) and on the export of F-35 parts to Israel (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1435).

The cases in which cassation in the interest of the law was sought are also relevant in the context of the task relating to the development of the law. A claim for cassation in the interest of the law relates to a decision that has become final and is instituted by the Procurator General with the Supreme Court. The outcome of a claim for cassation in the interest of the law does not negatively affect the rights of the parties to the case, but it is of interest to the law. In 2025, questions submitted to the Supreme Court with a claim for cassation in the interest of the law included requests for judicial substitution of a member of a disciplinary tribunal (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:87), the concept of an 'interested party' when supplementing the civil registry (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:766) and procedural law and the law of inheritance (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:511).

The Supreme Court is also the highest court in cases originating from the Caribbean part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This means that an appeal in cassation against decisions of the Joint Court of Justice of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba can be submitted to the Supreme Court. Generally, the law to be applied corresponds to the law in the European part of the Kingdom, but that is not always the case. Also, legal procedure is not identical in every respect. In addition, when interpreting and applying rules of law, the Supreme Court must take into account the possibility that societal views in the Caribbean part of the Kingdom may deviate from those in the Netherlands. In 2025, the Civil Division ruled, among other things, on the lack of regulation on the admission of civil lawyers from the Caribbean part of the Kingdom to the Supreme Court (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:518).