Cour de cassation; 2018-07-05; 17-10390
Decision by national courts in the field of European Union law — ECLI:FR:CCASS:2018:SO01112
Date: 2018-07-05
Subject matter: Judicial cooperation in civil matters;Lugano Convention
Origin: France

82018FR0705(51)_ENG_SUMJURE
JURE summary
JURE summary
An employee of Australian nationality (hereinafter ‘the plaintiff’) was hired in 1994, by a company, Aventis, which later merged with the Sanofi group. In 2005, a new contract was concluded with Sanofi Gestion SA, a Swiss company, which took over her previous employment in Australia. Since this date she worked in France until February 2009, then in South Africa until February 2012 and again in France until November 2013, when she was fired. These assignments were all on behalf of subsidiaries of the French group Sanofi.
The plaintiff sued Sanofi Gestion SA and Sanofi Aventis Groupe (hereinafter ‘the defendant’) before the conseil de prud'hommes de Boulogne-Billancourt (hereinafter ‘the Court of First Instance’) to be awarded various amounts.
The Court of First Instance declined jurisdiction to hear the case. The plaintiff appealed to the Cour d'appel de Versailles (hereinafter ‘the Court of Appeal’), which confirmed the decision. The plaintiff appealed to the Cour de cassation (hereinafter ‘the Supreme Court’).
The appellate decision held that the employment contract of 2005 provided that the employee, described as an international employee, would work on a secondment basis excluding any assignment in a country of which she is a national or permanent resident. It denied that the plaintiff could qualify France as her usual place of work because she worked there in the context of successive temporary secondments of the predetermined and agreed duration.
The Supreme Court based its decision on Article 19(2)(a) of the new Lugano Convention (1), interpreted in the light of Article 19(2)(a) of the Brussels I Regulation (2). The latter enables an employer domiciled in a Member State to be sued in another Member State, and the article referred to in the new Lugano Convention bases this choice on the place where the employee habitually carries out, or last carried out, their work.
The Supreme Court overturned all the appellate provisions. It considered that the Court of Appeal deprived its decision of a legal basis by not investigating whether France is the place where the plaintiff performed a major part of her work for her employer, taking into account the entire period of her activity, in accordance with the aforementioned provisions. The Supreme Court referred the parties to the same Court of Appeal otherwise composed.
(1) Convention on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters.
(2) Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters.