Jean-Michel Vertut

Facts and procedure. It will be recalled that in a press release dated July 22, 2019 (Press release n° 1354) B. Le Maire and A. Pannier-Runacher announced a summons before the Commercial Court of Paris against four entities of the E. Leclerc movement (Eurelec Trading, Scabel, Galec and ACDLEC) (...)

Facts. The dispute was between a book seller and its buyer in the Finnish courts over the late payment of 135 invoices. These invoices had due dates between April 10, 2015 and February 21, 2018. As these deadlines were not met, the seller claimed to be owed 172.81 euros in late payment (...)

Facts. The dispute was between a supplier (Phyto Plus) and one of its distributors (Frans Bonhomme). The two companies had entered into a commercial relationship from 2011 until March 1, 2020. The supplier claimed that its distributor had asked it in early 2016 to design and develop a specific (...)

This article was first published in the Lettre de la distribution published by the Centre du Droit de l’Entreprise of the University of Montpellier. Facts. The subject of the reported litigation is the alleged non-compliance by an Association of Milk Producer Organizations (Sunlait AOP), (...)

Facts. The case deals with the practice of exclusive import agreements in ultra marine territories, prohibited by Article L. 420-2-1 C. com. from the Law "Lurel" of November 20, 2012. The Court of Appeal ruled on an appeal by the wholesaler-importer in Martinique of a Champagne with a (...)

This article was first published in the Lettre de la distribution published by the Centre du Droit de l’Entreprise of the University of Montpellier. Facts. A supplier, Guy Guérin (the Supplier), based in Charente Maritime, is a wholesaler of fresh fruit and vegetables. Transgourmet (...)

This article was first published in the Lettre de la distribution published by the Centre du Droit de l’Entreprise of the University of Montpellier. Facts. Xerox (hereinafter "Xerox" or the "licensor") and Document Concept 87-23 one of its dealers (hereinafter "Concept" or the "dealer"), (...)

Cet article a fait l’objet d’une première publication dans la Lettre de la distribution publiée par le Centre du Droit de l’Entreprise de l’Université de Montpellier. Faits. La société Achats Marchandises Casino, Centrale de référencement du groupe Casino, et la société Distribution Casino (...)

Cet article a fait l’objet d’une première publication dans la Lettre de la distribution publiée par le Centre du Droit de l’Entreprise de l’Université de Montpellier. Faits. La société Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) fournisseur de café aux marques bien connues telles que L’or, Senseo, Tassimo, (...)

Contexte. On se souvient que la loi du 17 mars 2014 relative à la consommation (dite loi « Hamon ») a introduit des sanctions administratives, en lieu et place de sanctions pénales, pour non-respect des délais de paiement plafond, fixées dans la numérotation actuelle, aux articles L. 441-10 et (...)

Cet article a fait l’objet d’une première publication dans la Lettre de la distribution publiée par le Centre du Droit de l’Entreprise de l’Université de Montpellier. Faits et procédure. Aux fins d’établir si la société Swarovski France et des sociétés du même groupe se livraient à des (...)

Cet article a fait l’objet d’une première publication dans la Lettre de la distribution publiée par le Centre du Droit de l’Entreprise de l’Université de Montpellier. Faits. Une société française s’était vu concéder la distribution exclusive de ses produits dans l’Union Européenne et en (...)

Cet article a fait l’objet d’une première publication dans la Lettre de la distribution publiée par le Centre du Droit de l’Entreprise de l’Université de Montpellier. Faits. Jusqu’en janvier 2012, le secteur du bricolage bénéficiait d’un régime dérogatoire aux dispositions de la loi LME en (...)

Cet article a fait l’objet d’une première publication dans la Lettre de la distribution publiée par le Centre du Droit de l’Entreprise de l’Université de Montpellier. Faits. Deux sociétés françaises du secteur de l’organisation de voyages touristiques et implantées en France sont liées par (...)

Facts. As a general rule, the Distribution Newsletter aims to deal with the most recent decisions possible. However, a look back at cases from a few months ago can be useful when the news lends itself to it. This is the case for two judgments of the Commercial Court of Paris of May 31, whose (...)

Unrequited benefit and costs of participating in a tender* Facts and procedure. A company had been providing surveillance and guarding services for nineteen Monoprix stores since 2002. In 2013, a framework contract of indefinite duration formalised this situation. In 2015, Monoprix launched (...)

The Paris Court of Appeal condemns a French distributor for obtaining unfair advantages from a foreign supplier, and considers that the expiry of a foreclosure period for challenge invoices for services shall not a loss of the right to bring a legal action* Facts An American company was a (...)

It’s finally signed, and often in the last days of February, or even on the evening of Monday 1 March 2021! It is such a pity that this 1st March 2021 did not fall on a Friday, as it did two years ago, leading to a well-deserved weekend for key account managers and buyers. Because from the (...)

Facts Openhealth/Celtipharm (hereinafter "Open") accused its competitor, IMS Health (hereinafter "IMS"), of unfair competition, some of which, in particular legal actions, had anti-competitive purposes. Open had brought the matter before the Commercial Court of Nanterre, a non-specialized (...)

Facts and procedure The case, which received a lot of media attention, was one of the highlights of the trade negotiations for 2020 (Ord. référé Trib. Com. Paris, 16 Jan. 2020, No. 202000169, Lettre distrib 02/2020, our observations). In summary proceedings more than elsewhere, the sequence (...)

Facts The company Institut de Recherche Biologique (hereafter IRB) was linked with the company La Poste (hereafter La Poste) by a " Colissimo Entreprise " contract, the purpose of which was to take charge of, route and distribute parcels to its customers. This contract included the General (...)

Facts. The companies Speed Rabbit pizza (hereinafter "Rabbit") and Domino’s pizza France (hereinafter "Domino") specialise in the sale of delivered and take-away pizzas. They operate through a franchise network. A subsidiary of Domino, the company DPFC (hereinafter "DPFC"), which is also a (...)

Facts. Following a call for tenders, Canal+ Group (hereinafter "Canal") selected Technicolor Delivery Technologies (hereinafter "Technicolor") in December 2016 as the supplier of its new "G9" set-top boxes. These two companies signed a letter of intent setting out the terms and conditions (...)

Facts. Ensure a better distribution of the value created by the agricultural and agri-food sectors between all the actors in the production chain. This is notably the objective of the Equality Law passed almost two years ago. To achieve this objective, this law reversed the process of (...)

Facts and procedure. In April 2007, the American company Stanley Assembly Technologies (SAT), a company of the Stanley Black and Decker group, and the Spanish company Euro Herramientas (EH) signed a distribution contract for Stanley products in Spain and Portugal for a period of one year, (...)

In the judgment discussed here, the Court of Cassation clarified and recalled a series of points concerning the regime of home visits. Although they were made in the context of visits and seizures for the purpose of seeking evidence of deception, the solutions are, in our view, transposable to (...)

Following an initial CEPC opinion on a milk supply contract, previously commented on (see Circular Letter 12/2017, nos. obs.), the Commission once again examined this very specific type of contract, which is fairly symptomatic of the tensions that can exist between the players in the (...)

Facts. In 1998, the supplier Label G2 had entered into a commercial relationship with a customer, the company Excelvision, from which it sold its products. Following the acquisition of Excelvision by the Fareva Group, commercial negotiations were no longer to be conducted between Label G2 and (...)

Facts. In July 2013, the CCRA’s training services conducted search and seizure operations on the premises of several companies in a temporary employment operating group. In view of the information gathered during these inspections, in May 2015 the Authority was required to examine ex officio (...)

The case, emblematic of the tensions between suppliers and distributors during the annual negotiations, had been revealed last January in particular by the specialised press (LSA n° 2586, 16 January 2020, n° 2586, p. 14). Following a disagreement during year-end negotiations on the pricing and (...)

In our letter of April 2018, we commented on a ruling handed down in a case opposing the supplier Huyndai to one of its former distributors (Paris, February 7, 2018, No. 15/08853). In this case, a Hyundai distributor operated two sales outlets in Pau and Tarbes respectively. Each outlet gave (...)

Disputes over the application of the commercial agent’s public policy status are still ongoing, in particular over what is meant by the term "negotiate". The judgment under comment gives a new illustration of this. The case in point concerned a canvassing activity carried out by an (...)

Seized on the question of the scope of application of the obligation to establish a written agreement on the basis of the former Article L. 441-7 of the Commercial Code, the CEPC has just issued an opinion on the basis of the new Articles L. 441-3 and L. 441-4 resulting from the Order of 24 (...)

The Order of 24 April 2019 reforming Title IV reflects a desire on the part of the public authorities to approach the various restrictive practices according to an approach which, although minimalist in terms of the wording of what is prohibited, is nonetheless firm. Not without a somewhat (...)

The reported dispute was between Profima, an SEO centre based in La Réunion, whose mission is to list suppliers on behalf of large retailers. On March 22nd , 2007 and then on February 29th , 2008, Profima signed framework commercial cooperation agreements with a supplier, Sofexi, for the (...)

The rights of defence from the point of view of equality of arms and the right to an effective remedy have recently been abused in the context of an appeal procedure against the conduct of an incidental home visit, but the Court of Cassation has just restored them in a ruling of 13 June last. (...)

Since obstruction of investigations or proceedings before the competition authorities is likely to hinder them, it is punishable in itself. Thus, Article 23 § 1 of Regulation 1/2003 provides in particular for the possibility for the Commission to sanction undertakings that do not cooperate in (...)

According to a recent report in the daily newspaper Les Echos ("Les délais de paiement plus longs en France que dans le reste du monde", 10-11 May 2019, p. 3), based on figures from the credit insurer Euler Hermes, payment times for businesses have been extended by two days in France. These (...)

The qualification of a contract as a commercial agency, the key to access to the protective status resulting from the 1991 law, is the subject of our attention this month. In this case, a supplier and a sales intermediary had concluded two contracts on the same day. The first, a commercial (...)

Price promotion has become so frequent in the eyes of the consumer homo œconomicus that one might wonder whether, in his mind, promotional buying, once motivated by the feeling of making a good deal, has not become the principle and non-promotional buying the exception. Some professionals (...)

When it claims to be the victim of an anti-competitive practice, a company may seek compensation for its damage (rappr. Com. 6 October 2015, No. 13-24854: Distr. letter November 2015, nos. obs.). This opens the way for a so-called "follow-on" procedure, to be conducted before the specialized (...)

The EU Court of First Instance issued a judgment illustrating a practice of market access barriers in the pharmaceutical sector (see e.g., internally, from a procedural point of view, Crim. 26 Oct. 2016, no. 15-83477: Letter distr. December 2016, nos. obs.). In a lengthy judgment, the Court of (...)

The problem of the opinion How much leeway do distributors have to obtain from their private label supplier an analysis of costing by items and sub-items (breakdown of costs, in percentage and in value, for each item, but also by sub-items, including for the various raw materials, the (...)

A decision of the Paris Court of Appeal had caught our attention, in that it had recalled the need to establish the submission or attempted submission, when it comes to applying Article L. 442-6 I 2° C. com. (Paris, 20 Dec. 2017, No. 13/04879, Letter distr. January 2018, nos. obs.). The case, (...)

Genesis At the procedural level, it all began in 2004 with an assignment by the Minister of the Economy, on the basis of Article L. 442-6 III and L. 442-6, I, 2 a) in their then applicable version, of the Centrale Système U. The Minister maintained that the service of ’Action de construction (...)

The clauses providing in the GCS for compensation by the purchaser, in the event of cancellation of an order, to cover the costs borne by the supplier to honour it, do not ipso facto constitute a significant imbalance of article L.442-6 I 2° C. com. even if the compensation would reach 100% of (...)

The commented judgment is in line with case law precedents from which it is possible to draw a conclusion that the Paris Court of Justice wishes to restore to network promoters, in particular selective ones, their freedom of organisation in the distribution of their product (Rappr. T. Com. (...)

Agricultural production: CEPC contributes to the search for a balance in contractualisation* The CEPC opinion commented on here has a fairly broad scope. It refers to the problem of the structural imbalance between the agricultural production sectors and the rest of the sector, and questions (...)

Production cost increases and rate increases: proof and motivation required* The taking into account in the determination of the price of the evolution of the costs of the factors of production, both upwards and downwards, often leads to the insertion in the agreements of clauses more or (...)

Intermediaries’ remuneration and transparency: towards a new riot ?* Intermediaries and transparency: the debate continues (see recently : Central payments. La fin de l’obligation de reddition des comptes?, Lettre distr. juill./août 2017, N. Lefeuvre; Précision et transparence: une relation (...)

Promotional prices: the dangers of permanent promos or incorrectly crossed-out prices* Do not confuse low or attractive prices with promotional prices; be able to justify the latter. These are the lessons that can be drawn from the judgment under comment. The promotional nature of a price is (...)

Franchise entry fee and L. 442-6 I 1° and 2°* In a dispute with his franchisor during the launch phase of a franchise network, a franchisee sought to have his contract declared null and void on the grounds of fraud due to breaches of the pre-contractual obligation to provide information (in (...)

Entry into force of the clauses of the single agreement contributing to the determination of the price. A solution that raises questions about multiannuality* An opinion of the CEPC reminds us of the imperative nature of the deadline of 1 March for signing the summary agreement. This opinion (...)

Terms and conditions, pricing structure and buyer categories: requirement for precision* Two pharmacists from pharmaceutical pharmacies had created a Purchasing Grouping Structure (SRA) called "Pyxis Pharma", in order to negotiate on behalf of members with suppliers the conditions of (...)

Rebate on sales: lawfulness under L.442-6* In the context of a dispute concerning the brutal termination of an established commercial relationship which, in addition to the claim for compensation for the damage caused by the termination, gave rise to a claim for restitution of sums received (...)