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

According to Article 1643 of the Civil Code, the seller is required to guarantee latent defects even if it was unaware of their existence at the time of the sale. When the conditions for its implementation are fulfilled, the guarantee is applied as of right, without the buyer having to establish any fault, knowledge of the defect or bad faith of the seller, or to identify the party responsible for the damage or the cause of the defect . In fact, case law imposes on the professional seller an irrebuttable presumption of knowledge of the defect, deemed to be in conformity with Union law , that it cannot reverse either by establishing its good faith  or by demonstrating the undetectable nature of the defect . Thus, the e-mail sent directly from the manufacturer of the disputed ink, the seller's own supplier, which states that all batches of this type of ink will have to be destroyed, corroborates the existence of a defect afflicting the ink, which prevented the use of the purchaser's equipment that it was intended to be used with and which caused it to break down, so that the seller, deemed to have knowledge of the defects in the thing sold in his capacity as a professional, must be bound by the warranty .

However, the presumption only applies to the professional in its capacity as seller. It cannot be opposed against a professional buyer , in particular to lead to a sharing of liability with the seller, even when the buyer has not carried out a rigorous inspection of the delivered products . The rule also applies in successive sales channels: the Court of Cassation considers that the original seller cannot oppose against the intermediary seller its status of professional to escape the recourse action taken by the latter  or to escape the direct action of the sub-purchaser by relying on the intermediary seller's professional status and its necessary knowledge of the defect .

 Cass. com., 29 November 2017, LawLex201700002044JBJ.

 Case C-339/89 Alsthom Atlantique (SA), Judgment of 24 January 1991, LawLex201100000299JBJ.

 CA Paris, 5 April 1991, LawLex200500005583JBJ; October 6, 1995, LawLex200500004362JBJ; 8 January 2014, LawLex201400000415JBJ. Contra, CA Aix-en-Provence, 16 May 2008, LawLex201200001900JBJ.

 CA Paris, 9 September 1992, LawLex200700000742JBJ; Cass. 1re civ., 16 December 1992, LawLex200500005463JBJ; CA Rennes, 6 December 2002, LawLex200700000743JBJ; CA Riom, 16 January 2003, LawLex200700000744JBJ.

CA Orléans, 26 October 2023, LawLex202300012909JBJ.

 Cass. com., 27 November 1991, LawLex200300003018JBJ; CA Montpellier, 25 September 2002, LawLex200500004123JBJ.

 Cass. com., 24 April 1990, LawLex200300003015JBJ; CA Grenoble, 22 June 2005, LawLex200600001716JBJ.

 Cass. com., 9 February 2010, LawLex201200001573JBJ. See CA Caen, 11 July 2002, LawLex200700000625JBJ; CA Pau, 18 April 2013, LawLex201400001567JBJ.

 Cass. 1re civ., 20 June 1995, LawLex200500003698JBJ. Cf. CA Rouen, 15 September 2004, LawLex200700000713JBJ.

621. Irrebuttable presumption of knowledge of the defect