Distribution agreement: The French Supreme Civil Court rules that the action for public order nullity due to the lack of counterpart is submitted to the prescription of the article L. 110-4 of the commercial code (Auchan France & Eurauchan / Jean-Marc Valensi & Bethsa B)

*This article is an automatic translation of the original article, provided here for your convenience. Read the original article. Facts and procedure. Several commercial agreements, concluded between 2002 and 2011, linked costume jewellery producers and a retailer (Auchan). Believing that these agreements included false commercial cooperation services, the producers sued the distributor, by deeds of 27 December 2011 and 13 June 2013, on the basis of Article L. 442-6, I, 1°, of the French Commercial Code (now L. 442-1, I, 1°), for the annulment of these agreements and, consequently, for the restitution of the substantial sums (€300,000 and €18,500) paid in respect of these false services (of which the judgment tells us nothing). The distributor objected, in defence, to the limitation