Cour de cassation; 2022-02-16; Com., 16 février 2022, pourvoi n° 20-20.061
Decision by national courts in the field of European Union law — ECLI:FR:CCASS:2022:CO00118
Date: 2022-02-16
Subject matter: Judicial cooperation in civil matters
Origin: France

82022FR0216(51)_ENG_SUMJURE
JURE summary
JURE summary
This ruling of the Cour de Cassation (hereinafter ‘the Supreme Court’) concerned the wording of a jurisdiction clause.
The Spanish company Cat Mader (hereinafter ‘the plaintiff’) entered a commercial agency agreement with the French company Opfood product (hereinafter ‘the defendant’). This contract included the following jurisdiction clause: ‘Any disputes arising out of this agreement shall be settled by the courts that have jurisdiction under Community law. The court of the place where the defendant is shall have exclusive jurisdiction’.
The plaintiff lodged before the French courts a claim against the defendant for payment of its commissions and for damages.
The cour d’appel d’Amiens (hereinafter ‘the Court of Appeal’) ruled that the jurisdiction clause was null and void because it was contradictory. The Court of Appeal considered that, although the second sentence of the clause was in favour of the French courts, the first sentence referred to Community law, which, in contractual matters, gives the plaintiff an option between the courts of the place where he is domiciled and the courts of the place where the defendant is domiciled.
The plaintiff appealed to the Supreme Court. It claimed that the courts competent under Community law are, as a rule, the courts of the place where the defendant is domiciled. The plaintiff also claimed that the Court of Appeal had infringed Article 25 of the Brussels I Regulation (recast) (1), which provides that ‘[if] the parties, regardless of their domicile, have agreed that a court or the courts of a Member State are to have jurisdiction to settle any disputes which have arisen or which may arise in connection with a particular legal relationship, that court or those courts shall have jurisdiction, unless the agreement is null and void as to its substantive validity under the law of that Member State. Such jurisdiction shall be exclusive unless the parties have agreed otherwise’.
The Supreme Court referred to Article 25 of the Brussels I Regulation (recast) as well as the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, which stated in Case C-387/98: ‘It is sufficient that the clause states the objective factors on the basis of which the parties have agreed to choose a court or the courts to which they wish to submit disputes which have arisen or which may arise between them. Those factors, which must be sufficiently precise to enable the court seised to ascertain whether it has jurisdiction, may, where appropriate, be determined by the particular circumstances of the case’ (2).
The Court of Appeal referred to rules that were applicable only in the absence of a jurisdiction clause, whereas it should only have verified that the clause stated the above-mentioned ‘objective factors’.
The Supreme Court set aside the judgement of the Court of Appeal.
(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 (recast).
(2) Judgment of the Court of Justice of 9 November 2000, Coreck Maritime GmbH v Handelsveem BV and Others, C-387/98, ECLI:EU:C:2000:606.