The Spanish Constitutional Court has recently upheld the appeal for constitutional protection (remedy of Amparo) lodged by late actor Christopher Lee, considering that “the rights of the plaintiffs” have been violated concerning “effective judicial protection” and “a process with all guarantees”.

In 2007, Spanish illustrator Gerardo Moreno sued Christopher Lee and associates before a commercial court in Burgos, Spain, claiming compensation for the misuse of an illustration and graphic design in the DVD edition of the film Jinnah.Lee and the other defendants were sentenced in absentia in 2009 to pay 710,000 euros as neither of the defendants was present at the court proceedings.

Now, the judgment of the Constitutional Court, of 24 February 2020, establishes that none of the defendants was notified correctly, nor did the court ‘even attempt to serve personally or to find out the debtor’s address’. According to the ruling, the judge should have notified the defendants personally, without being able to do so through an edictal notification without exhausting all the search tools available.

The judgement can be found here: https://lnkd.in/dxJ7YKn