Les simples critiques des motifs de la rupture du contrat de concession automobile pour faute, en raison d'une insuffisance des ventes du concessionnaire, ne sont pas susceptibles de faire dégénérer le droit contractuel de résiliation unilatérale en abus.

CA Versailles, 12e ch., 2 octobre 2012, n° 11-04127

Cass. com., 2 octobre 2012, n° 11-23.213

Cass. 3e civ., 2 octobre 2012, n° 11-24.222

Cass. com., 2 octobre 2012, n° 11-23.731

Commission, September 28, 2012, No M.6627

Les professionnels qui souscrivent des contrats pour les besoins de leur activité ne peuvent se prévaloir des dispositions de l'article L. 121-3 (ancien art. L. 121-1, II) du Code de la consommation.

CA Lyon, 3e ch. A, 28 septembre 2012, n° 11-05675

Dès lors qu'est invoquée la rupture brutale de relations commerciales établies, même à titre non-exclusif, il y a lieu d'appliquer les dispositions de l'article D. 442-3 du Code de commerce pour déterminer la juridiction territorialement compétente. 

Les litiges relatifs à la rupture brutale de relations commerciales établies, qui relèvent de la matière délictuelle, doivent être portés devant le tribunal spécialisé compétent en fonction du lieu du siège de la victime dans le ressort duquel le dommage est subi.

La clause attributive de compétence contenue dans le contrat liant les parties doit être écartée dès lors que les parties ne peuvent conventionnellement déroger à la règle de la compétence exclusive des juridictions spécialisées.

CA Lyon, 3e ch. A, 28 septembre 2012, n° 11-07382

Cass. mixte, 28 septembre 2012, n° 11-11.381

Cass. mixte, 28 septembre 2012, n° 11-18.710

CA Paris, Pôle 5 ch. 2, 28 septembre 2012, n° 11/16075

Cass. 2e civ., 27 septembre 2012, n° 11-12.512

CA Paris, Pôle 5 ch. 5-7, 27 septembre 2012, n° 2011/15443

GC, 6th chamber, September 27, 2012, No T-370/06

CA Grenoble, ch. com., 27 septembre 2012, n° 12/00933 

GC, 6th chamber, September 27, 2012, No T-348/06

GC, 6th chamber, September 27, 2012, No T-347/06

GC, 6th chamber, September 27, 2012, No T-351/06

GC, 6th chamber, September 27, 2012, No T-360/06

GC, 6th chamber, September 27, 2012, No T-243/09

The aggravating circumstance of repeated infringement can be attributed to a parent company when the subsidiary which committed the offense in the second case depends on the same parent companies as the subsidiary convicted in the first case.

The increase of the fine by the Commission by reason of the undertaking's role of leader must be cancelled where this role is only established for the very first years of operation of the cartel.

The fact that documentary evidence was established by a person who did not participate in any meeting and is only an indirect witness to the events described does not detract from its probative value, insofar as it was drawn up immediately after the meetings concerned by an employee working in close contact with the person representing the undertaking at those meetings.

In order to be classified as a leader in a cartel, an undertaking must have been a significant driving force for the cartel and have borne individual and specific liability for its operation without it having to have exerted pressure or dictated the conduct of other members of the cartel.

The role of instigator cannot be inferred purely because of the specific rebate proposal made by a supplier to a group of buyers, where it is not established that it was at the origin of the establishment of such a rebate.

In order to be classified as an instigator of a cartel, it is not sufficient merely for an undertaking to have been a founding member, it must have persuaded or encouraged other undertakings to instigate or to join it at the time of the establishment or enlargement of said cartel.

In the context of its unlimited jurisdiction, the General Court can increase the fine against an undertaking for its failure to cooperate during the administrative procedure where it fails to submit, during the judicial proceedings, decisive evidence for the setting of the amount of the fine and which was in its possession at from the outset.

The fact that an undertaking has not been able to obtain full access to another undertaking's reply to the Statement of Objections on which the Commission based its decision, or on those of other cartel members, does not constitute a breach of the rights of the defense, insofar as, given the tendency of parties to minimize their role in the cartel, it is unlikely that those documents would have contained any exculpatory evidence for the other participants.

The existence of intermediary companies between the subsidiary and the parent company does not affect the possibility of applying the presumption that the parent company in fact exercises decisive influence over its wholly-owned subsidiary.

The presumption that the parent company effectively exercised decisive influence applies even where for many years it owned only 40% of the subsidiary, the other 60% being held by another undertaking, since the two companies are placed in a position analogous to that in which a single company owns the entire share capital of its subsidiary due to the joint control by the group and their subsequent merger.

GC, 6th chamber, September 27, 2012, No T-343/06

An undertaking whose role of instigator in the infringement is insufficiently substantiated can still be classified as a leader where it established contacts facilitating the setting up of the cartel, organized numerous cartel meetings at its premises and acted as a spokesperson for a group of undertakings during cartel meetings.

An increase of 10% in the amount of the fine does not appear disproportionate to sanction the repeated attempts of an undertaking to obstruct the investigations by the inspectors, having regard to the importance of investigations as a necessary tool for the Commission in carrying out its role as guardian of the Treaty in competition matters and the need to steer the conduct of undertakings towards compliance with the competition rules.

The fact that the undertaking's lawyers temporarily refused to grant the Commission access to the office of one of its directors is sufficient for it to be considered to have refused to submit totally to the investigation decision, without there being any requirement for the Commission to show that the delay caused by that refusal may have led to the destruction or concealment of documents.

The refusal to grant the Commission's inspectors access to its building before its lawyers arrived is classified as a refusal to submit to an investigation decision. 

The exercise of the right to legal assistance must not impair the proper conduct of the investigation or, specficially, prevent the Commission inspectors from immediately accessing the whole of the undertaking's premises, notify it of the inspection decision and occupy the offices of their choice while waiting until it has consulted its lawyer.  

The Commission is not required to specifically inform the undertaking in the Statement of Objections that the amount of its fine may be increased in view of its refusal to cooperate during the investigations.

In the case of  an agreement between sellers and buyers, the Commission is not required, when assessing the amount of the fines, to ensure that the final amount of the fines reflects the difference in overall turnover of the undertakings concerned in the amount of their sales or purchases in the relevant market.

It is not necessary to measure the actual impact of the infringement in order to classify it as very serious.

An undertaking cannot attempt to minimize the gravity of the infringement by separating the various elements of the cartel insofar as the Commission must carry out an overall assessment of it.

The Commission is not required to give access to the replies from the other parties to the Statement of Objections when it does not intend to use them as a basis for its decision.

Under the Guidelines on horizontal cooperation agreements, it is not necessary to examine the actual effects on competition and the market of agreements that have as their object a restriction of competition by means of price fixing, output limitation or sharing of markets or customers, insofar as those agreements are presumed to have negative market effects. 

The Commission is not required to carry out an analysis of the market power of the members of the buyers' market in order to determine whether it was in fact capable of restricting competition, insofar as the agreement at issue is not a cooperation agreement by which the purchasers were seeking to counterbalance the sellers' market power but a collective price cartel between two groups.

Agreements between large builders and suppliers which impose restrictions that are not indispensable to the attainment of economic benefits on third parties - small builders - in the form of limited rebates, cannot benefit from an individual exemption.

Negotiations in which manufacturers do not make purchases from suppliers but collectively fix prices and discounts do not have the object of concluding joint purchasing agreements which are exempted under the Guidelines on horizontal cooperation agreements.

The pursuit of price stability is not different from the fixing of purchase prices when examining whether an agreement has an anticompetitive object.

Agreements intended to fix the purchase and selling prices of the product concerned and to grant a preferential rebate to certain operators pursue an anticompetitive object.

The fact that the cartel did not have the objective of harming the final consumer does not call into question its anticompetitive object.

The Commission is not required to establish the impact of an infringement on competition where it finds the agreement at issue to be anticompetitive by object. 

Where the Commission has documentary evidence demonstrating the anticompetitive nature of an agreement, there is no need to examine whether an undertaking had a commercial interest in participating in it.

A cartel between constructors and their suppliers has not been imposed by the latter where it is established that it was collectively negotiated, it provided for lower prices for buyers in comparison with competitors and retaliation measures were implemented against the suppliers if they did not comply with the agreed prices.  

In the absence of any binding regulatory provision imposing anticompetitive conduct, the Commission is only entitled to conclude that the operators in question enjoyed no autonomy if it appears that that conduct was unilaterally imposed upon them by the national authorities through the exercise of irresistible pressures, such as the threat to adopt State measures likely to cause them to sustain substantial losses.

GC, 6th chamber, September 27, 2012, No T-357/06

Although certain circumstances, such as consolidation of the accounts at the group level, are irrelevant, other elements, such as close personal links between the parent company and its subsidiary or the capacity of the parent company to reorganize the tasks assigned to its various subsidiaries, while not alone capable of establishing the existence of a single economic entity, may nonetheless constitute as a whole a body of consistent evidence.

A parent company may not claim that the obligations by which it is bound under the law of the Netherlands preclude any rebuttal of the presumption of exercise of a decisive influence insofar as undertakings cannot rely on national legislation in order to avoid the rules of European Union law.

GC, 6th chamber, September 27, 2012, No T-361/06

The Commission is not required to examine whether final consumers have been deprived of the advantages of competition when the agreement in question pursues an anticompetitive object.

Arrangements which do not amount to collective purchasing agreements as referred to in the Guidelines on horizontal cooperation agreements but which were intended only to fix prices and rebates cannot be exempted especially where they impose restrictions on third parties which are not indispensable to the attainment of the economic benefits sought.

The presumption of the imputability of the behavior of the subsidiary to the parent company cannot be implemented when the Commission has not mentioned that possibility in the Statement of Objections.

The Commission is precluded in its final decision from holding the parent company liable for the behaviors of its subsidiary if it did not mention the possibility of doing so in the Statement of Objections, insofar as the undertaking is prevented from being able to conduct its defense properly in that regard.

GC, 6th chamber, September 27, 2012, No T-362/06

Measures of which the definition and the methods of financing are carried out by a public industrial and commercial institution fully in a position to guide the use of the resources provided to the approved economic agricultural committees to finance, as appropriate, specific advantages for certain farmers, constitute State aid insofar as the beneficiary committeees of the measures have the power only to participate or not in the system thus defined, by agreeing or refusing to pay the sectoral contribution thus fixed.

GC, 6th chamber, September 27, 2012, No T-139/09

Contrairement à la clause des conditions générales de vente qui sanctionne le retard de paiement par la suppression des remises, inopposable au cocontractant qui n’en avait pas connaissance, les pénalités de retard pour non-paiement des factures sont dues de plein droit au fournisseur, en application des articles L. 441-1 et L. 441-10 (ancien art. L. 441-6) du Code de commerce, sans rappel et sans avoir à être indiquées dans les conditions générales des contrats.

CA Metz, ch. com., 27 septembre 2012, n° 10/04124

La rupture brutale de relations commerciales établies est imputable au fournisseur qui subordonne leur maintien à des conditions nouvelles moins avantageuses pour son partenaire.

La rupture de relations commerciales établies depuis une dizaine d'années qui intervient 15 jours après la notification par le fournisseur des nouvelles conditions de vente au distributeur présente un caractère brutal, dès lors que celles-ci n'ont pas fait l'objet de négociations préalables.

CA Metz, ch. com., 27 septembre 2012, n° 09-01441

L'appel d'un jugement rendu sur le fondement de l'article L. 442-1 du Code de commerce, introduit après l'entrée en vigueur du décret du 11 novembre 2009, doit nécessairement être porté devant la Cour d'appel de Paris.

CA Douai, 2e ch. sect. 1, 27 septembre 2012, n° 11-02489

An aggravating factor due to recidivism cannot be found where more than 15 years have elapsed between the two infringements.

Where the restrictive agreement only concerns sales to independent customers, the Commission excludes captive sales, i.e. sales internal to the groups of undertakings concerned, from the calculation of the fine.

If the actual object of an agreement is to restrict competition, it is not necessary to define the geographic markets in question precisely, provided that actual or potential competition on the territories concerned was necessarily restricted, whether or not those territories constitute markets in the strict sense.

In order to prove that there has been a concerted practice, it is not necessary to show that a participant has formally undertaken in respect of one or several other participants to adopt a particular course of conduct or that the competitors have colluded over their future conduct on the market, but it is sufficient that, by its statement of intention, the participant eliminated or, at the very least, substantially reduced uncertainty as to the conduct to expect from it on the market.

The case law according to which, when the infringement is established by proof of the absence of an explanation other than a concerted practice between the undertakings in question, it is sufficient for the latter, in order to counteract that proof, to bring elements which cast the facts established by the Commission in a different light, is not applicable where the authority's findings are based on documentary evidence.

GC, 6th chamber, September 27, 2012, No T-82/08

TUE, 5e ch., 27 septembre 2012, n° T-303/10

La présomption d'exercice effectif d'une influence déterminante s'applique même lorsque la société mère n'a détenu, pendant de longues années qu'une participation de 40 % dans le capital de sa filiale, les autres 60 % étant possédés par une autre entreprise, dès lors que les deux sociétés mères se trouvaient dans une situation analogue à celle où une société détient seule le capital de sa filiale, du fait de leur contrôle conjoint du groupe et de leur fusion ultérieure.

L'existence de sociétés intermédiaires entre la filiale et la société mère est sans influence sur la possibilité d'appliquer la présomption selon laquelle la société mère exerce effectivement une influence déterminante sur sa filiale détenue à 100 %.

Le fait qu'une entreprise n'ait pu accéder à l'intégralité de la réponse à la communication des griefs d'une autre, sur laquelle la Commission s'est fondée, ou sur celles des autres membres de l'entente, ne constitue pas une violation des droits de la défense, dès lors qu'au regard de la tendance des entreprises à minimiser leur participation à l'entente, il est peu probable que ces documents contiennent des éléments à décharge pour les autres participants.

Dans le cadre de sa compétence de pleine juridiction, le Tribunal de l'Union peut majorer le montant de l'amende pour sanctionner le défaut de collaboration d'une entreprise lors de la procédure administrative lorsque celle-ci ne produit qu'au cours de la procédure contentieuse des documents pertinents pour le calcul de l'amende dont elle disposait dès l'origine.

Pour être qualifiée d'incitateur, une entreprise ne doit pas simplement avoir figuré parmi les membres fondateurs du cartel mais doit avoir poussé ou encouragé d'autres entreprises à mettre en place l'accord ou à s'y joindre au moment de l'établissement ou de l'élargissement de l'entente.

Le rôle d'incitateur ne peut être déduit de la seule proposition de remise spécifique faite par un fournisseur à un groupe d'acheteurs, lorsqu'il n'est pas établi qu'il est à l'origine de sa mise en place.

Pour être qualifiée de meneur, une entreprise doit avoir représenté une force motrice significative pour l'entente ou avoir porté une responsabilité particulière et concrète dans le fonctionnement de celle-ci, sans qu'il soit pour autant nécessaire qu'elle ait exercé des pressions ou dicté le comportement des autres participants.

Le fait qu'une preuve documentaire ait été établie par une personne qui n'a participé à aucune réunion et n'est qu'un témoin indirect des événements relatés ne retire rien à sa force probante, dès lors qu'elle a été établie en liaison immédiate avec les faits par un collaborateur travaillant en relation étroite avec celui qui a représenté l'entreprise aux réunions.

La majoration de l'amende effectuée par la Commission au titre de la qualité de meneur d'une entreprise doit être supprimée lorsque celle-ci n'est établie que pour les toutes premières années de fonctionnement de l'entente.

La circonstance aggravante de récidive peut être imputée à une société mère lorsque la filiale auteur de l'infraction dans la deuxième affaire dépend des mêmes sociétés mères que la filiale condamnée dans la première affaire.

Décisions de justice rendues en 2012 - Page 24