On November 21, 2023, the plaintiff filed a lawsuit claiming compensation for lost earnings as a result of a traffic accident on November 5, 2015. However, the lawsuit was mistakenly filed against a handling company that had only handled the case on behalf of the tortfeasor’s insurance company.

By judgment of 6 May 2024, the handling company was acquitted, as it was not the proper defendant. On 26 June 2024, the plaintiff’s lawyer requested information as to who the case should properly be brought against, which was provided on 27 June 2024. The case was then re-filed against the insurance company on 8 July 2024.

The court assumed that 2 months and 2 days elapsed between the acquittal of the handling company and the reinstatement of the case against the insurance company. The court found that the reinstatement had not occurred “without undue delay” and that the original action had therefore not retained its time-interrupting effect. The Copenhagen City Court then acquitted the insurance company, as the claim was time-barred.

“The Copenhagen City Court’s judgment of October 2, 2025 is in accordance with case law, according to which a case must be re-filed “without undue delay” if the original lawsuit is to retain its time-interrupting effect.

This means that the case must be reopened in close temporal connection with the conclusion of the original case – that is, within days to a few weeks, cf. U2001.317H, U2008.2410H, U2016.3821V and FED2022.40V.

Since in the present case more than two months elapsed from the conclusion of the original case to the reopening, and there was no information about circumstances that could justify this, the court rightly found that the condition of reopening “without undue delay” was not met.”