## Abstract

Simultaneous Characterisations in French civil law: Essay on an unusual fictional mechanism—French civil law recognises, in a few cases, that a single factual situation may simultaneously correspond to several contradictory legal characterisations, each of which only applies to some cases. Such simultaneous characterisations introduce an inconsistency within legal concepts in order to protect a specific and personal interest. They are used in order to mimic the effects of “inopposability”, which allows a third party to pretend that a contract or other juristic act does not exist with respect to them. When there is no contract or other juristic act to which the theory of “inopposability” could be applied, a legal fiction operates by changing the characterisation of facts with respect only to the people who have an interest in it. Like most other fictions, these simultaneous characterisations introduce a derogation to ordinary legal conceptions, but such fictions are a historically transitory mechanism which is bound to disappear when they become unnecessary because new and more suitable legal techniques were developed.