Price transparency: The French Supreme Court decides, for the first time, that late fees shall not apply to non-professionals (FPBI, Solidarité et jalons pour le travail / Portakabin)

*This article is an automatic translation of the original article, provided here for your convenience. Read the original article. Late payments are, as we know, a real scourge. Because the ordinary law, which only grants interest at the legal rate (art. 1231-6, Civil Code), "has never discouraged bad payers" (D. Mainguy, note JCP E 2009, 1543), the Commercial Code has long provided for a derogatory rule: penalties for late payment are due at a rate that is "equal to the interest rate applied by the European Central Bank to its most recent refinancing operation plus 10 percentage points", subject to a provision to the contrary which could not, however, "set a rate less than three times the legal interest rate" (art. L. 441-10, II, C. com.). The Context All right. All right. But what is