Cour de cassation 1ère Chambre civile; 2023-06-07; 1re Civ., 7 juin 2023, pourvoi n° 22-12.402
Decision by national courts in the field of European Union law — ECLI:FR:CCASS:2023:C100402
Date: 2023-06-07
Subject matter: Judicial cooperation in civil matters
Origin: France

82023FR0607(52)_ENG_SUMJURE
JURE summary
JURE summary
In this case, the Cour de Cassation (hereinafter ‘the Supreme Court’) examined if the cour d’appel de Versailles (hereinafter ‘the Court of Appeal’) made a correct application of the law when it considered that a party was a consumer.
A natural person (hereinafter ‘the defendant’) who subscribed for securities issued by the Luxembourgish company Elite’s exclusive collection (hereinafter ‘plaintiff 1’), which was managed by the Luxembourgish company Elite Partners (hereinafter ‘plaintiff 2’), sued both plaintiffs in France: he requested the annulment of the subscription contract, the reimbursement of what he paid, and damages.
Following a judgment of the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal held that the French courts had no jurisdiction.
First, it held that the defendant was a consumer and thus was entitled to rely on Article 18(1) of the Brussels I Regulation (recast) (1), which provides that ‘[a] consumer may bring proceedings against the other party to a contract […] in the courts for the place where the consumer is domiciled’, by way of derogation from Article 4(1) of this Regulation, according to which the courts of the place where the defendant is domiciled have jurisdiction.
Secondly, the Court of Appeal accepted to examine the action for reimbursement against plaintiff 2 on the ground that the reimbursement was an automatic effect of the annulment of the contract, and thus pertained to contractual matters and to the special rules deviating from the principle that the competent courts are the courts of the place where the defendant is domiciled.
The plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court. They submitted two pleas.
In the first plea, they alleged that plaintiff 1 was deceived, and that the Court of Appeal should have verified ‘whether the other party to the contract could reasonably have been unaware of the private purpose’ of the subscription on account of the conduct of the ‘supposed consumer’. The plaintiffs relied on the judgment given by the Court of Justice of the European Union (hereinafter ‘the CJEU’) in Case C-464/01 (2).
The plaintiffs also claimed that the defendant was not entitled to rely on the fact that he was a consumer, because fraud corrupts everything.
Regarding this first plea, the Supreme Court noted that, although the defendant claimed to be an ‘experienced investor’, he also stated that he was a musician, acted in his own name and was investing capital from his savings, so that his erroneous declaration was not sufficient to establish fraud.
In their second plea, the plaintiffs claimed that the Court of Appeal infringed Article 4(1) of the Brussels I Regulation (recast) when it held that the action for reimbursement against plaintiff 2 was ancillary to the action for annulment of the contract.
The Supreme Court agreed with this argument: it noted that the Court of Appeal did not find a contractual relationship freely consented to between the defendant and plaintiff 2, and recalled that the CJEU held, in Case C-242/20 (3), that a restitutionary obligation that does not arise from a voluntary commitment by the defendant to the applicant does not come within matters relating to a contract.
The appeal was dismissed.
(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 20 January 2005, Johann Gruber v Bay Wa AG, C-464/01, ECLI:EU:C:2005:32, paragraph 51.
(3) Judgment of the Court of Justice of 9 December 2021, HRVATSKE ŠUME d.o.o., Zagreb v BP Europa SE, C-242/20, ECLI:EU:C:2021:985, paragraph 45.