Introduction

Role of the parties

Role of judge

Contentious matters

Concept

Powers of the judge

Principle of adversarial proceedings

Non-contentious matters

Underlying principles of civil proceedings

Right to bring civil action

Abuse of the right to bring proceedings

Type of action

Concept of action

Interest in bringing proceedings

Standing

Rules governing action

Legal action

Initial claim

Counterclaim

Additional claim

Intervention

Incidental claim

Interruption of limitation period

Application to file suit (demande en justice)

Defense on the merits

Procedural objections (exceptions de procédure)

Procedural bars to admissibility (fins de non-recevoir)

Defenses

Nature of claim

Amount of the claim

Jurisdiction ratione materiae

Principles

Exceptional territorial jurisdiction

Extension of jurisdiction

Territorial jurisdiction

Competent court

Formal requirements

Substantive requirements

Presentation of the QPC (Question prioritaire de constitutionnalité)

Referral to Court of Cassation

Referral to Constitutional Council

Referral of the QPC

Investigation procedure

Conduct of hearing

Decision of the Constitutional Council

Proceedings before Constitutional Council

Priority question of constitutionality (QPC)

Simplified case preparation procedure

Participative procedure for case preparation purposes

Extra-judicial case preparation

Recourse to technical expert

Agreements on extra-judicial case preparation (mise en état)

Disclosure of exhibits

Production of documents

Exhibits

Common provisions for investigations

Rules specific to each investigation

Investigative measures

Disputes concerning private deeds (actes sous seing privé)

Forgery procedure against authentic instruments

Challenges to documentary evidence

Oath sworn as decisive evidence

Oath tendered by way of supplementation

Judicial oath

Administration of evidence

Hearings

Deliberations

Judgment

Formation

Judgment after adversarial proceedings

Judgment by default or judgment after trial

Contentious or non-contentious judgment

Judgment on the merits or provisional ruling (avant dire droit)

Combined judgment

Provisional judgment

Judgment in fast track proceedings

Types

Joinder and severance of proceedings

Interruption of proceedings

Suspension of proceedings

Discontinuance of proceedings (extinction)

Procedural incidents

Plea of lack of jurisdiction

Recusal/Dismissal for legitimate suspicion

Challenging the judge's competence

General rules

Voluntary intervention

Compulsory intervention

Joinder in proceedings (intervention)

Existence of a judgment

Same subject matter, cause, and parties

Authority of res judicata

General conditions of enforcement

Provisional enforcement

Grace period

Enforcement of the judgment

Bearing of costs

Order to pay non-recoverable costs

Verification/Recovery

Claims/Disputes

Costs and expenses

Ordinary remedies

Extraordinary remedies

Remedies

Judgments

Calculation of time-limits

Acts of judicial commissioners

Service of documents

Ordinary notification

Notification between lawyers

International notification

Place of notification

Notification

Communication by electronic means

Procedural acts

1. Ordinary Law of Civil Procedure

The devolutive effect has two aspects, positive and negative. The positive aspect implements the principle of double jurisdictional level, allowing litigants to request a hierarchically superior court to review the dispute submitted to the trial court a second time, in its entirety, both in fact and in law (retrial on the merits). The negative aspect limits the examination conducted by the Court of Appeal to the dispute as it was submitted to the trial court.

Pursuant to Article 561 of the Code of Civil Procedure, the appeal reopens the matter judged before the appellate court, and it is adjudicated anew  on both the facts and the law under the conditions and limits determined in Books One and Two of the Code of Civil Procedure . This is a true injunction to the Court of Appeal to retry the dispute. Only the notice of appeal effects the transfer of the contested parts of the judgment .

The reform introduced by Decree No 2017-891 ended the liberal approach to the devolutive effect of the appeal. Previously, in the absence of limitation of the appeal to certain parts of the judgment, the devolution applied to the whole , whereas in the presence of a limited appeal, the appeal only referred to the Court of Appeal the parts of the judgment challenged for which the appeal was declared admissible and those that depended on it, except in cases of indivisibility of the subject matter of the dispute .

Henceforth, Article 562 provides that the appeal refers to the court the knowledge of the parts of the judgment it expressly challenges and those that depend on it (para. 1) , so that a Court of Appeal cannot, to declare inadmissible an action contesting a filiation link, hold that in the presence of an appeal limited to the rejection of the request for biological expertise, it was only referred, excluding the rejection of the request for annulment of a recognition, the knowledge of this part of the judgment . Similarly, an appeal concerning the part of the order noting the irregularity of the procedure prior to detention extends to the part stating there is no need to rule on the application contesting the detention placement decision, so that the first president who overturns the first part is required to examine the legality of this decision . The Court of Cassation specified that the absence of devolutive effect must be noted when the appellant's notice of appeal does not specify the challenged parts of the judgment and refers to an annex listing them, transmitted the same day by RPVA, which has no procedural value and is not an integral part of the notice, while the appellants have not demonstrated being unable to indicate these mentions in the notice, which could contain all the challenged parts of the judgment .

Devolution applies in full only when the appeal seeks the annulment of the judgment  or if the subject matter of the dispute is indivisible (Art. 562, para. 2, CPC) . Since 1 September 2017, a notice of appeal that aims for a “total appeal,” without expressly targeting the criticized parts of the judgment, is sanctioned by invalidity for a formal defect under Article 114 of the Code of Civil Procedure, when the appeal does not seek to annul the judgment or the subject is not indivisible . The mention in the subject of notices of appeal that it is “total,” without correction by a new notice of appeal, does not imply criticism of all parts of the judgment and cannot be regularized by submissions on the merits filed within the required time frame stating the criticized parts .

Once the appeal is admissible, the court is required to rule on the merits of the entire dispute . When the Court of Appeal overturns on the grounds of jurisdiction, it may nevertheless rule on the merits of the dispute if the decision is subject to appeal in all its provisions and if it is the appellate court relative to the court it deems competent . Conversely, a Court of Appeal that considers the appeal before it inadmissible exceeds its powers by ruling on the merits of the judgment that was the subject of the appeal . When the appellant, whether or not they appeared at first instance, primarily seeks the annulment of the judgment due to the irregularity of the initiating act and subsidiarily on the merits, the Court of Appeal that upholds this irregularity cannot rule on the merits . Thus, when the appeal aims to annul the judgment for irregularity in the referral to the first instance court, the Court of Appeal that annuls the initiating act and the judgment does not have the power to order ex officio the reorganization or judicial liquidation of the director of a legal entity . In other words, the lack of proper referral to the first judge deprives the appeal of its devolutive effect . In the event of annulment of the judgment due to the invalidity of the initiating act, and if the devolution does not apply to the whole, only a litigant can take the initiative to introduce new proceedings . Conversely, when the Court of Appeal annuls a judgment for a reason other than the irregularity of the initiating act, it is, by virtue of the devolutive effect of the appeal, required to rule on the merits of the case . A first president cannot thus uphold the inadmissibility of a fee determination request submitted by a lawyer, when they have been seized by the lawyer's client with an appeal for annulment against the decision of the bar president who ruled out of time on this request .

To justify on appeal the claims they submitted to the first court, the parties may invoke new arguments, produce new documents, or propose new evidence (Art. 563 CPC) . This provision echoes the obligation to concentrate arguments, whereby the claimant must present, from the initial proceedings, all the arguments they consider likely to support their claim. However, under penalty of inadmissibility raised ex officio, the parties cannot submit new claims to the court except to enforce compensation, dismiss opposing claims, or adjudicate issues arising from a third party's intervention, or the occurrence or revelation of a fact (Art. 564 CPC). Thus, purchasers of a property are admissible to request, on appeal, after the judgment is overturned, the delivery of the acquired property, provided they only became aware of the insolvency of the company involved after the judgment . The judicial reorganization of a company following a judgment condemning it to repair defects affecting a building constitutes a development of the dispute concerning the property owner, who is therefore admissible to request for the first time on appeal the condemnation of the said company's insurer based on the direct action available to them, even if the insurer was a party in the first instance but without the owner having made a claim against them . The concept of the development of the dispute  is, however, unrelated to the admissibility of new claims made on appeal against a person who was a party to the trial before the court . The Court of Cassation considers that the judge is not obliged to raise ex officio the bar to proceedings based on the novelty of a claim on appeal that is not a mandatory public policy provision since Article 564 only grants them a simple discretion in this regard . According to Article 565, the concept of new claims does not include those that aim for the same ends as those submitted to the first judge, even if their legal basis is different . It has thus been held that a claim based on contractual liability aims for the same ends as one involving tortious liability, namely obtaining damages for the harm suffered . Similarly, a claim for payment of an amount representing the cost of remedial work, made for the first time on appeal, has the same purpose as that for the execution of work in kind presented before the first judges . This ability given to the parties implies that a claim was made before the first-degree jurisdiction . The prohibition of new claims does not, however, apply, according to Articles 566  and 567, to claims that constitute the accessory, consequence, or necessary complement of the claims submitted to the first judge, or to counterclaims . The court of appeal must examine the novelty of the claim concerning each exception. The parties may, during the proceedings, adjust the amount of their claim, and a head mentioned in the original claim, whose subsequent submissions have only specified the amount by increasing it, cannot be considered a new claim . Similarly, a claim for compensation for construction defects that were only discovered or revealed after the expert report was filed does not constitute a prohibited new claim on appeal, as the contractual liability action against the architect of the contractor was initiated in very broad terms to obtain full compensation for all building defects, and the reference in the summons to the expert report ordered in summary proceedings does not limit the subject of the claim to the defects listed in the expert report . Conversely, a manager of a limited liability company, having initiated an action for payment of their remuneration in the first instance, cannot request for the first time on appeal the annulment of the general meeting's resolution setting the remuneration . Finally, since the action for nullity of the sale is different from the action for rescission, the former cannot be paralyzed in its effects like the latter by an offer from the purchaser, and therefore, it does not have the same purpose and is neither the accessory nor the consequence, nor the complement of the action for rescission, a claim for nullity due to the absence of the sale price of a property whose rescission for lesion was requested in the first instance is inadmissible on appeal .

An appeal constitutes a remedy exercised by a party in its interest. Thus, regardless of the extent of the devolution, the court cannot, on grounds that are not challenged by principal appeal and are not the subject of a cross-appeal, “worsen its situation” . A Court of Appeal thus disregards Article 562 of the Code of Civil Procedure when it overturns a judgment to the detriment of the appellant on a ground that has not been challenged by the respondent .

Cass. 1re civ., 20 October 2010, LawLex202300014568JBJ, holding that it is incumbent upon the Court of Appeal to consider the facts as they stand at the time of its ruling.

CA Paris, 25 October 2024, LawLex202400008451JBJ, holding that if the devolutive effect provided for by Article 561 of the Code of Civil Procedure submits to the Court of Appeal the issues presented to the trial court but not decided by it due to an infra petita, without it being possible to reproach the court for disregarding Article 463 of the same code, the court is therefore competent to rule on the omission to rule committed by the trial court.

Cass. 2e civ., 17 November 2022, LawLex202400008733JBJ, considering that in the absence of an impossibility to simultaneously enforce two decisions concerning the parties to the dispute, indivisibility, within the meaning of Article 553 of the Code of Civil Procedure, is not established, the appeal by one of the parties cannot have effect with respect to a defaulting party.

Cass. soc., 14 October 2020, LawLex202300014576JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 30 January 2020, LawLex202300014574JBJ.

Cass. 3e civ., 23 October 1984, LawLex202300014583JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 8 April 2004, LawLex202200007068JBJ.

Cass. ass. plén., 15 May 1992, LawLex202300014577JBJ; Cass. 2e civ., 9 December 1997, LawLex202300014578JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 25 May 2000, LawLex202300014582JBJ; Cass. 1re civ., 17 October 2007, LawLex202300014588JBJ; Cass. soc., 13 November 2002, LawLex202300014585JBJ.

Cass. com., 4 January 2005, LawLex202300014584JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 8 January 2015, LawLex202300014570JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 18 December 1996, LawLex202300014579JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 2 July 2020, LawLex202300014569JBJ; Cass. 2e civ., 13 January 2022, LawLex202400008272JBJ; CA Angers, 22 October 2024, LawLex202400008687JBJ, considering that the notice of appeal determines the scope of the devolutive effect with respect to the respondents, and this initial referral can only be expanded by a cross-appeal or a provoked appeal.

Cass. 3e civ., 15 December 2016, LawLex202300014575JBJ; Cass. 2e civ., 17 May 2018, LawLex202300014572JBJ; 19 March 2020, LawLex202300014573JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 11 September 2014, LawLex202300014571JBJ.

Cass. com., 10 February 2015, LawLex202300002573JBJ; Cass. 1re civ., 28 October 2015, LawLex202200004278JBJ, considering that defenses on the merits can be invoked at any stage and that, to justify the claims they submitted to the first court, the parties may, on appeal, raise new arguments; Cass. 2e civ., 24 June 2004, LawLex202300014581JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 20 November 2003, LawLex202300011459JBJ.

Cass. 1re civ., 30 January 1996, LawLex202300011454JBJ; Cass. ass. plén., 11 March 2005, LawLex202300014502JBJ; Reims, 12 November 2024, LawLex202400008916JBJ, considering that when the claimants seek compensation for their damages resulting from defects affecting the house, which can be remedied in kind or by equivalent, the monetary claims presented on appeal and those concerning the execution of repair work aim at the same objectives as the claim presented at first instance for the demolition and reconstruction of the building, even if certain defects were not mentioned at first instance since they arise from the same construction act, undertaken in execution of the same contract, between the same parties, and are therefore complementary to the claims presented to the trial court.

Cass. ass. plén., 11 March 2005, LawLex202300014502JBJ, considering that the evolution of the dispute involving the impleading of a third party before the Court of Appeal, within the meaning of Article 555 of the Code of Civil Procedure, is characterized only by the revelation of a factual or legal circumstance, arising from the judgment or subsequent to it, modifying the legal aspects of the dispute.

Cass. 3e civ., 10 January 2001, LawLex202200011597JBJ; Cass. 2e civ., 1 July 2010, LawLex202300011474JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 10 January 2013, LawLex202200010940JBJ.

Cass. 3e civ., 19 December 2001, LawLex202300011467JBJ; 3 July 2002, LawLex202300011464JBJ.

Cass. 1re civ., 30 June 1970, LawLex202300011455JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 24 June 2004, LawLex202300014581JBJ; 6 January 2012, LawLex202200005900JBJ.

Cass. 3e civ., 10 March 2016, LawLex202300011480JBJ.

Cass. 3e civ., 15 June 1982, LawLex202300011465JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 31 January 2019, LawLex202300011478JBJ: Article R. 311-5 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures excludes the application of Article 566 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

Cass. 2e civ., 12 May 1980, LawLex202300011457JBJ; 6 October 2011, LawLex202300011472JBJ; 4 June 2002, LawLex202300011451JBJ, holding that a Court of Appeal disregards Article 566 of the Code of Civil Procedure by declaring admissible a claim for indemnity presented by an insured against their insurer, when at first instance, no claim for indemnity had been made by the insured against the insurer who had voluntarily intervened in the proceedings, so that the insured could not claim to explain, as virtually included therein, a claim that they had not made against them.

Cass. com., 4 June 1973, LawLex202300011469JBJ; Cass. com., 30 November 1999, LawLex202300011470JBJ; Cass. 2e civ., 17 September 2020, LawLex202300011476JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 27 March 1974, LawLex202300011462JBJ, Bull. civ. II, No 108.

Cass. com., 2 June 1975, LawLex202300011468JBJ.

Cass. 3e civ., 19 December 1977, LawLex202300011466JBJ, the action for invalidity of the sale differs from rescission, and it does not pursue the same ends, is neither ancillary, nor a consequence, nor a complement of the action for rescission.

Cass. 1re civ., 16 November 2016, LawLex202300014543JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 30 January 2020, LawLex202300010260JBJ.

Cass. 1re civ., 9 June 2021, LawLex202300014587JBJ.

CA Versailles, 15 June 2023, LawLex202400006140JBJ, holding that when the notice of appeal seeks to amend the judgment without specifying the parts of the judgment being challenged, the devolutive effect does not apply.

Cass. 1re civ., 3 April 2019, LawLex202300014586JBJ.

Cass. 1re civ., 19 September 2019, LawLex202300014589JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 12 January 2023, LawLex202400000377JBJ.

CA Paris, 5 September 2024, LawLex202400006084JBJ, considering that the annulment of the judgment results in the devolutive effect of the entire dispute, so that the court is required to rule on the merits of the entire dispute and cannot refer the case back to the court; Cass. 2e civ., 14 September 2023, LawLex202400000647JBJ.

270. Features and implementation