Cour de cassation; 2020-09-30; 19-15152
Decision by national courts in the field of European Union law — ECLI:FR:CCASS:2020:C100593
Date: 2020-09-30
Subject matter: Judicial cooperation in civil matters;Lugano Convention
Origin: France

82020FR0930(51)_ENG_SUMJURE
JURE summary
JURE summary
The judgment of cassation pits a French company (hereinafter ‘the plaintiff’) against a Ghanaian company and the public prosecutor of the Paris Court of Appeal (hereinafter ‘the defendant’).
In 2011, a Ghanaian company entered into a cooperation contract for the construction and operation of a cement plant with a Swiss company, a subsidiary of an Italian cement group. The contract contained a provision granting jurisdiction to the competent courts of Paris. The plaintiff, another subsidiary of the same Italian group, oversaw the legal and financial arrangements for the operation.
The Swiss company withdrew from the project in 2016. The Ghanaian company sued it for damages, jointly and severally with the plaintiff, before the tribunal de commerce de Paris (hereinafter ‘the Court of First Instance’). It claims defective performance and wrongful termination of the contract.
The plaintiff filed an appeal raising a plea of lack of jurisdiction, aiming to refer the claims of the Ghanaian company against it to the court in Versailles, the place of its registered office. The Court of First Instance would be responsible for hearing the claims against the Swiss company. The cour d’appel de Paris (hereinafter ‘the Court of Appeal’) rejected the claim.
The plaintiff petitioned the Cour de cassation (hereinafter ‘the Supreme Court’) that dismissed its claim, confirming the appellate decision and the jurisdiction of the Court of First Instance, in accordance with the jurisdiction clause.
In its main plea, the plaintiff seeks the application of Article 4(1) and Article 8 of the Brussels I Regulation (recast) (1). It argues that these articles provide that a plurality of defendants may be sued before a specific court of a Member State, on the strict condition that said court is at the precise place of domicile of one of the defendants. This does not apply to the courts of Paris in the present case. Consequently, article 42 of the CPC (2) supplements this deficiency, since the plaintiff denies being a party to the jurisdiction clause which must be considered as a separate contract which it did not sign.
The Supreme Court refutes this argument and confirms the applicability in this case of the new Lugano Convention (3), in particular of its Article 23, which allows parties, one of whom is domiciled in a Member State, to agree on the jurisdiction of a specific court. In conjunction with Article 6(2), it is possible to sue, as a third party, a person domiciled in a Member State bound by the Convention before the court in which the original action was brought unless the sole purpose of the action is to remove that third party from its court.
In the present case, the French company belongs to the same Italian group as the Swiss company, and it was directly involved in the legal and financial arrangements for the disputed transaction. Neither party disputes the validity of the jurisdiction clause in favour of the Court of First Instance. Consequently, the aforementioned articles of the new Lugano Convention allow the plaintiff to be validly sued in Paris, where the court seized of the original claim within the meaning of the aforementioned Article 23 is located.
(1) Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2012 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters.
(2) Code de procédure civile (Code of civil procedure).
(3) Convention on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters.