The Bottom Line
- Ignoring pre-litigation demands is a costly mistake. Even if you ultimately concede the principal claim, failing to respond to valid notices can leave your company liable for the claimant’s full legal costs.
- Your “official” channels are not the only ones that count. A court may consider a demand sent to a general company email address as valid notice, rejecting arguments that a specific web form or portal must be used.
- Technical evidence of email delivery is highly persuasive. Server logs with “proof of delivery” codes (like SMTP success codes) can effectively defeat a defense that a demand was never received, shifting the burden of proof to your company to show why it was not processed internally.
The Details
In a case with significant implications for corporate claims handling, the District Court of Noord-Holland addressed a common yet critical question: what happens when a company claims it never received a demand for payment and is then sued? The dispute arose from a standard passenger compensation claim for a cancelled flight under EU Regulation 261/2004. While the airline, Royal Air Maroc, eventually conceded its obligation to pay the €400 compensation, it strongly contested paying the passenger’s legal fees, arguing it had been sued without any prior warning.
The turning point in the case was the evidence presented by the passenger’s legal representative. The airline initially denied receiving any demand letters sent via email. In response, the passenger submitted not just screenshots of the sent emails, but crucial technical data from their mail server. These “proof of delivery” logs showed that for every email sent to the airline, the airline’s own server responded with an “SMTP code 250,” a standard technical confirmation that unequivocally means the message was successfully delivered. This digital receipt directly contradicted the airline’s assertion that the communications were never received.
The court found this technical evidence decisive. It ruled that the passenger had successfully met their burden of proof to show the demand letters had reached the airline. The court dismissed the airline’s defense that the claim should have been submitted via a specific web form, noting that pre-litigation demands are generally “form-free.” A final argument that the email address was a “no-reply” address also failed, as this was not apparent to the sender, who was entitled to assume the message would be read. Because the airline had been given a clear opportunity to settle the matter before court proceedings began and failed to do so, it was ordered to pay the passenger’s full legal costs in addition to the original compensation.
Source
Rechtbank Noord-Holland
