French Consumer Law is a comprehensive and comparative overview of French and EU law in this field, covering: advertising, unfair commercial practices, conditions for the validity of contracts, unfair terms, product conformity, latent defects, product safety.

French Consumer Law

Commercial practices, which are based on allegations, indications or presentations, true or false, which may mislead the consumer, are prohibited. It is not necessary for the practice to have actually misled . The offense of misleading commercial practice is not a result of conduct offense: an advertisement containing false or misleading claims falls within the scope of Article L. 121-2 of the Con …

False or misleading claims

Commercial practices, which are based on allegations, indications or presentations, true or false, which may mislead the consumer, are prohibited. It is not necessary for the practice to have actually misled . The offense of misleading commercial practice is not a result of conduct offense: an advertisement containing false or misleading claims falls within the scope of Article L. 121-2 of the Consumer Code, even if it has not given rise to the conclusion of contracts . The rule also applies more generally to all unfair commercial practices .

Articles 6 and 7 of Directive No 2005/29 of 11 May 2005 require that the misleading practice, whether carried out by means of an act or omission, causes or is likely to cause the consumer to take a commercial decision that he would not otherwise have taken. The French legislator, in transposing the text, did not adopt this formulation. However, the use of the formulas “likely to” and “of a nature to” show that the recognition of a potential effect is sufficient to trigger the prohibition.

The assessment of the actual impact of the measure by the judge appears superfluous . Thus, after having criticized the trial courts for having retained the grievance of misleading advertising, without examining whether the advertisement in question had decided a significant number of pharmacists who were the recipients of the message to buy the specialty advertised , the commercial chamber of the Court of Cassation adopted a solution in accordance with the spirit of the text by considering that the substantial distortion in the economic behavior of the consumer is not assessed in terms of the impact of the practice on the market but on the transactional decision of the average consumer . The Paris Court of Appeal aligned itself with the position of the Court of Cassation: to assess whether an advertisement is likely to persuade the consumer to take a transactional decision he would not have taken otherwise, there is no need to establish an actual effect; the potential effect is sufficient . The Court of Cassation has extended this approach to confusion as referred to in Article L. 121-2, 1° of the Consumer Code: it punishes both the risk of and proven confusion .

 Cass. crim., 8 May 1979, LawLex200400000511JBJ; 29 November 1983, LawLex200400000512JBJ; 6 December 1988, LawLex200400000513JBJ.

 CA Paris, 2 May 2002, LawLex200300001287JBJ.

  TGI Créteil, 11 June 2010, LawLex201000001098JBJ: Article L. 121-1 (former Article L. 120-1) of the Consumer Code criminalizes not only unfair commercial practices which have actually distorted the consumer's behavior, but also those likely to do so.

  See especially Court of Cassation, Cass. crim., 3 May 2001, LawLex200300004376JBJ; 4 November 2003, LawLex200300004467JBJ.

  Cass. com., 7 July 2009, LawLex200900003108JBJ.

  Cass. com., 11 March 2014, LawLex201400000489JBJ.

  CA Paris, 21 May 2014, LawLex201400002016JBJ; 25 March 2015, LawLex201500000426JBJ.

Cass. com., 4 October 2016, LawLex201600001718JBJ,

French Consumer Law

172. False or misleading claims

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Les décisions de justice citées dans ce paragraphe :

Les notions juridiques connexes

172. False or misleading claims

Demandez un accès gratuit au contenu exclusif Livv – juristes d’entreprise

Les décisions de justice citées dans ce paragraphe :

Les notions juridiques connexes

Demandez un accès gratuit
au contenu exclusif Livv – juristes d’entreprise