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

Article 651 of the Code of Civil Procedure defines service as the notification carried out by act of a judicial commissioner.

Under the terms of Article 653 of the Code of Civil Procedure, service may be effected on paper  or electronically, since Decree No 2012-366 of 15 March 2012 , supplemented by the Order of 28 August 2012 , issued pursuant to the Law of 22 December 2010 .

Paragraph 1 of Article 662-1 provides that electronic service must be carried out under the conditions set out in Articles 748-1 to 748-9. Paragraph 2 specifies that the service document must indicate the recipient's consent to this mode of service, and paragraph 3 states that the service can be considered as having been made in person, meaning hand-delivered, only if the recipient has acknowledged receipt of the document on the day it was transmitted. Also, paragraph 1 of Article 663 requires that the original document from the judicial commissioner, in the case of electronic service made in person, must mention the date and time when the recipient acknowledged receipt of the document.

Paragraph 3 of Article 662-1 provides that, in other cases, service is effected at the domicile. In these cases, the judicial commissioner must notify the person concerned of the service on the first working day by ordinary letter, mentioning the delivery of the service by electronic means, as well as the nature of the document and the name of the applicant.

If Article 654 establishes the principle of service in person, it is nevertheless not required that the judicial commissioner verify the identity of the person claiming to be the recipient of the document. Thus, the service is valid as long as the document has been delivered to the person who presented themselves, at the address indicated on the document, as the concerned party .

When the document to be served concerns several people, service must be made separately to each of them. Thus, when the judgment to be served pronounces a conviction against each of the spouses, the judicial commissioner must draft two separate documents for service, even if each case, almost identical, is clearly presented therein .

If it is a legal entity, the document must be delivered to its legal representative, a proxy of the latter, or any other person authorized for this purpose. However, the legislator does not require the judicial commissioner delivering the document to a legal entity to go to the manager's residence, as they are only obligated to notify at the company's registered office . Furthermore, if the commissioner must, when the summons intended for a legal entity has been handed over in person, specify, on pain of invalidity, the name and capacity of the person to whom the copy of the document was left , they are not required, however, to verify either the accuracy of the information given by the person who agrees to receive the document and claims to be duly authorized for this purpose, or the declared capacity of that person , so that the service of a judgment delivered to a company and containing the statement “speaking to a guard claiming to be authorized to receive the document as declared” is valid and regular and is identified as service in person, which, moreover, triggers the appeal period .

If, pursuant to paragraph 1 of Article 693, the requirements of Article 654 must be observed on pain of invalidity, Article 655 provides a number of exceptions to the general rule when personal service proves impossible. Thus, the document may be delivered either at the domicile or, in the absence of a known domicile, at the residence, provided that the judicial commissioner details in the document the efforts made to effect service on the person of the recipient and the circumstances characterizing the impossibility of such service . The judicial commissioner must specifically indicate what concrete steps were taken and which individuals were questioned .

Merely stating “name on the mailbox” is not sufficient, in the absence of other measures, to establish the reality of the recipients' domicile. Moreover, the verifications must be carried out by the judicial commissioner him or herself. Thus, the service of notice of termination of a rural lease must be declared null and void if the judicial commissioner merely took the statements of the recipient's son, met at the neighboring equestrian center, without verifying himself whether personal service at the recipient's domicile had proven impossible.

According to Article 655, paras. 3 and 4, the copy may be delivered to any person present at the domicile or residence of the recipient, provided that the person present accepts it and states their name, first name, and capacity . Indeed, in the absence of the recipient of the service, the person present at the domicile, to whom the copy is delivered, is deemed to have necessarily accepted it by receiving it . The judicial commissioner must also leave at the domicile or residence of the recipient a dated notice of passage warning them of the delivery of the copy and mentioning the nature of the document, the name of the applicant, as well as the details of the person to whom the copy was delivered.

The requirements of Articles 654 and 655 must be observed under penalty of invalidity (Art. 693, para. 1, CPC). In this respect, a Court of Appeal cannot declare an appeal by a company admissible and well-founded when the only mention by the judicial commissioner, in the service of judgment document, of the verification at the address where he went, of the indication of the recipient's name on the mailbox, is insufficient to establish the actual registered office of the legal entity recipient of the document in the absence of other diligence, and it results from the company's K bis extract that it has its registered office at a different address than the one mentioned in the service document .

In the event that no one can or wants to receive the copy of the document, Article 656 provides that service is still effected at the domicile, if it results from the verifications made by the judicial commissioner, which will be mentioned in the service document, that the recipient indeed resides at the indicated address . In this case, the judicial commissioner leaves a notice of passage at the domicile or residence, in accordance with the prescriptions of the last paragraph of Article 655, which also mentions that the copy of the document must be collected as soon as possible from the commissioner's office, against receipt or signature, by the interested party or by any specially authorized person. The copy of the document is kept at the office for three months. After this period, the judicial commissioner is discharged from it.

Pursuant to Articles 657 and 693, para. 1, the judicial commissioner must, on pain of invalidity, indicate on the copy the conditions under which the delivery was made, and it must be placed in a sealed envelope bearing only the name and address of the recipient of the document and the commissioner's seal affixed to the closure of the envelope. Furthermore, Article 658 requires, in cases where personal service proves impossible, as provided in Articles 655 and 656, as well as in cases of service at an elected domicile, or when service is made to a legal entity, that the judicial commissioner notify the interested party of the service, on the same day or at the latest the first working day, by ordinary letter containing the same information as the notice of passage and recalling, if the copy of the document has been deposited at their office, the provisions of the last paragraph of Article 656. This letter must also contain a copy of the document of service, with the commissioner's seal affixed to the envelope. However, it is not required that these documents prove that the letter actually reached the knowledge of its recipient .

Finally, when the person to whom the document must be served has no known domicile or residence, the judicial commissioner is required to attempt personal service at their workplace (Art. 659 Code of Civil Procedure), after having made sufficient efforts to verify the actual domicile of the recipient of the document.  If the workplace is also unknown, the judicial commissioner draws up a report detailing the efforts made to locate the recipient of the document.  Thus, a court of appeal cannot declare a late appeal inadmissible based on reasons that do not demonstrate that the judicial commissioner conducted thorough investigations to serve the judgment.  In this case, on the same day or, at the latest, the next working day, under penalty of invalidity, they must send the recipient, at the last known address, by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt, a copy of the report, to which a copy of the document to be served is attached, and on the same day, they must inform the recipient by regular mail of the completion of this formality. These provisions apply to the service of a document concerning a legal entity that no longer has a known establishment at the address indicated as the registered office by the commercial and companies register. According to the Court of Cassation, the service of a judgment by means of a report of unsuccessful searches, which is subject by law to well-defined conditions and procedures with the obligation for the serving judicial commissioner to precisely record in the document the efforts made to locate the recipient, meets the requirements of a fair trial.  However, the service of a document according to the procedures of Article 659, at a location other than the last known address, cannot be considered notification, so the court of appeal is required to verify whether the address at which the service was made is the last known address of the recipient of the document. 

Cass. 2e civ., 6 February 2025, LawLex202500000945JBJ, which specifies that the irregularity arising from the lack of prior signature by the judicial commissioner of the document served by a sworn clerk constitutes a formal defect, the non-compliance of which can only lead to invalidity under the conditions provided by Article 114 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

Decree No 2012-366 of 15 March 2012 on the service of court bailiff documents by electronic means and international notifications, OJ of 17 March 2012, Art. 2.

Cass. civ. 2e, 28 March 1984, LawLex202300012559JBJ; Cass. civ. 3e, 21 February 2001, LawLex202300012560JBJ; 25 March 2021, LawLex202300012563JBJ.

Cass. civ. 2e, 21 July 1986, LawLex202300012558JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 12 October 1972, LawLex202300012555JBJ; 16 May 1979, LawLex202300012557JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 28 March 1984, LawLex202300012559JBJ.

Cass. civ. 2e, 13 November 2015, LawLex202300012561JBJ.

CA Aix-en-Provence, 8 February 2024, LawLex202400005789JBJ.

Cass. civ. 2e, 12 October 1972, LawLex202300012555JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 8 December 2022, LawLex202400005712JBJ; CA Paris, 25 January 2024, LawLex202400005756JBJ.

Cass. civ. 2e, 3 November 1993, LawLex202300012626JBJ.

Cass. civ. 2e, 7 December 2006, LawLex202300012627JBJ.

Order of 28 August 2012 implementing the provisions of Title XXI of Book I of the Code of Civil Procedure for court bailiffs, JO 0202 of 31 August 2012.

Cass. com., 2 May 2001, LawLex202300012630JBJ; Cass. civ. 2e, 19 December 2002, LawLex202300012629JBJ.

Cass. civ. 2e, 2 July 2020, LawLex202300012632JBJ.

Law No 2010-1609 of 22 December 2010 on the enforcement of judicial decisions, the conditions for practicing certain regulated professions, and judicial experts, OJ of 23 December 2010.

Cass. 1re civ., 20 December 2012, LawLex202300005980JBJ.

Cass. civ. 2e, 8 November 2001, LawLex202300012554JBJ.

Cass. 2e civ., 21 June 1995, LawLex202300009466JBJ.

Cass. civ. 2e, 24 March 2005, No 04-12.704, LawLex202300009550JBJ.

CA Paris, 2 May 2024, LawLex202400005757JBJ.

Cass. civ. 2e, 6 October 1971, LawLex202300012553JBJ.

284. Service (signification)