Sudden break: The French Supreme Court decides, for the first time, that Article L. 442-6, I, 5° of the French Commercial Code does not apply between an agent and a principal (IDF Management / Gifi)

*This article is an automatic translation of the original article, provided here for your convenience. Read the original article. On 2 October 2019, the Court of Cassation handed down an important and noteworthy ruling (D. actu 17 October 2019, obs. X. Delpech; CCC 2019, No. 198, obs. N. Mathey; AJ Contrat 2019, p. 483, note N. Dissaux; adde F. Buy, De quelques conflits de lois internes en droit des affaires, D. 2019, p. 2257). Two questions were raised in the context of a dispute between Gifi and one of its manager-agents. One, which was particularly delicate, concerned the possibility for the manager to claim damages for the abrupt termination of an established commercial relationship. The other, more traditional, concerned the validity of a post-contractual non-competition clause