U moderno vrijeme sve je više pravnih odnosa koji imaju veze s više od jedne države te iz raznih razloga sadrže međunarodni element. U situacijama s tim elementom javljaju se brojna pravna pitanja koje se u drugim slučajevima na postavljaju. Ona su kako materijalnopravne tako i procesnopravne prirode, a odnose se npr na.: rješavanje dileme treba li u određenom slučaju kao mjerodavno primijeniti domaće ili strano pravo; pravni položaj stranaca; sudbenost; međunarodnu nadležnost, osiguranje parničnih troškova te na priznanje stranih sudskih odluka. Sva ta materija je u Republici Hrvatskoj uz svesrdnu pomoć pravne znanosti iscrpno regulirana brojnim zakonima a postoje i mnogi multilateralni i bilateralni međunarodni ugovori koji se njome bave. S obzirom na sve navedeno mogli bi se očekivati da će se u vezi sa sporovima s međunarodnim obilježjem razviti bogata sudska praksa. To se, međutim, ipak nije dogodilo. Judikatura doduše postoji, ali se ne bi moglo reći da je ona obilna. Razlozi za to su uglavnom slijedeći:
- slučajevi u kojima dolazi do izražaja međunarodno obilježje izuzetak su u odnosu na ostale predmete koji je pojavljuju pred sudovima;
- većina predmeta s međunarodnim elementom se nimalo ne razlikuje od onih u kojima on ne postoji jer je njegova nazočnost pravno irelevantna. Tada sud u pravilu postupa i odlučuje kao i kad je pravni odnos ograničen isključivo na tuzemstvo. U takvim slučajevima sudovi se u svojim odlukama često uopće i ne osvrću na element inozemnosti, ma da bi to ponekad trebali učiniti, jer okolnost da je on u konkretnom postupku neodlučan, nije uvijek sama po sebi jasna i nesporna.;
- i sudovi i stranke skloni su primjeni domaćeg prava u skladu s kojim žive i djeluju i koje im je manje ili više poznato. Iako su pravila koja uređuju situacije s međunarodnim elementom dio domaćeg prava, ona ponekad upućuju na primjenu stranog prava s kojim bi se sudionici u postupku tek trebali upoznati, a to redovito znači put u neizvjesnost, pa je donekle shvatljivo, ali ne i opravdano, njihovo povremeno nastojanje da pronađu razloge za odlučivanje u skladu s pravom vlastite države i onda kad bi trebali primijeniti strano pravo.
Ma da odluke koje se bave situacijama s međunarodnim obilježjem nisu brojne, njih se s vremenom nakupio toliki broj da sve one zbog ograničenosti prostora nisu mogle biti obuhvaćene u ovom napisu, pa sam na žalost bio prisiljen većinu njih eliminirati i ostaviti samo neke i to one iz međunarodnog privatnog prava. Odluke su izložene nedirnute, onako kako su publicirane u raznim pravnim glasilima, a sistematizirane su prema odredbama pravnih izvora koje su u njima primijenjene. Uz svaku sudsku odluku navedeno je i glasilo u kojem je objavljena.In modern times, there is an increasing number of legal relations that have to do with more than one country and for many reasons include an international element. In situations including this element, numerous legal issues occur, which would not appear otherwise. They are of substantive and procedural legal nature and they refer to e.g.: resolving the dilemma whether domestic or foreign law should be used as the applicable law in a particular case; the legal status of foreigners; jurisdiction; international jurisdiction; insurance of legal expenses and recognition of foreign court decisions. In the Republic of Croatia, this entire subject matter has been regulated in detail with the wholehearted help of the jurisprudence in the form of numerous laws and there are also many multilateral and bilateral international agreements addressing the subject. In view of all of the above, one would expect that regarding the disputes of international character a rich judicial practice would evolve. This, however, did not happen. Judicature indeed exists, but it could not be described as opulent. This is mostly due to the following reasons:
- cases in which international character is prominent are an exception in relation to other cases that appear before the courts;
- most of the cases with international element are not in the least bit different from those where it is not present because its presence is legally irrelevant. Then the court generally acts and decides the same as when the legal relation is limited exclusively to inland. In these cases courts often disregard the foreign element when making decisions, although sometimes they should take it into account, because the circumstance that in a particular case it is not relevant, is not always clear and indisputable in itself;
- both the court ant the parties tend to apply national law under which they live and act and which is more or less familiar to them. Although the rules regulating the situations with international element are a part of the national law, they sometimes point to the application of foreign law which the litigants should study first, and this regularly means a path into uncertainty, so their occasional attempts to find reasons to decide in compliance with the law of their own state, even when they should apply foreign law, are rather understandable but not justified.
Although the decisions dealing with situations of international character are not numerous, they gathered up to such a number that they couldn\u27t have been included in this paper due to limited space, so I was unfortunately forced to eliminate most of them and leave only some, more particularly those from the international private law. The decisions are presented intact, as they were published in various legal publications and they are organized according to the provisions of legal sources applied in them. Next to every court decision, the publication in which it was published is specified
