With today’s globalization, Quebec companies are increasingly moving toward exporting. From a legal standpoint, while this business approach is commendable, it may nonetheless hold some unpleasant surprises for newcomers to international trade. Where a dispute looms on the horizon, you may quickly find yourself the defendant before a court of law of a country whose legal system is foreign to you.
Should you fail to include a forum-selection clause in a contract, that is to say a contractual provision pre-designating the court that may be seized of a possible dispute, forum is then determined according to the rules of domestic law of each country in question. Based on this assumption, it often happens that one or more countries may have jurisdiction to hear the dispute in accordance with their own legislation. This may lead to checking out a jurisdiction or "forum-shopping", that is to say the creditor will rush to choose the country whose legal system will most favour him for the
