Page 420 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CHAPTER EIGHT
8.4 The French Réforme de la prescription of 2008
A first superficial look at the Code civil before its revisions of 2005 and 2008 might make one believe that French sales law suffered from flaws similar to the Dutch sales law under the BW 1838. The latter had experienced concurrence problems between remedies for latent defects, non-performance, deliberate fraud, and error.77 However, the Cour de Cassation proved more flexible than the Dutch Supreme Court in that it did not consider the remedies for a breach to safeguard from latent defects and the remedies for non- performance mutually exclusive. If the remedy for latent defects had expired, judges had to explore whether the longer-lasting claim for non-performance lay open.78
Consequently, in France, the boundaries between the limitation periods of remedies for non-performance and latent defects were not strictly drawn. The expiration of one remedy did not necessarily exclude the other. As a result, there were less incentives for a rapprochement of the remedies for defects and non-performance in France than there had been among Dutch and German law scholars before the legal reforms of 1992 and 2002.79
Until recently, therefore, steps to modify the remedies for defects in things sold in the Code civil had not yet been taken. With the implementation of Directive 1999/44/EG on consumer rights in sales, however, a debate ensued among French legal scholars whether the then existing dichotomy between garantie and performance of contracts should be maintained in the Code civil. Some argued that the distinction between safeguarding duties and a duty to perform was based on a proper balance of interests of buyers and sellers. Equating the delivery of a defective item as non-performance would be too detrimental to sellers. Others argued that delivery of a defective object equally constituted non-performance as late delivery or delivery of less than agreed.80
A proposal issued in 2002 by professor Viney to replace the seller's duty to safeguard from defects in the Code civil by a duty to deliver an item in conformity with what had been agreed failed to convince the French lawgiver.81 Merely the remedies' periods of limitation were changed. Since 2005, article 1648 Cc decrees a two-year period to be counted from the discovery of the defect in order to put an end to the legal
77 See 8.2.
78 The Cour de Cassation argues that that duty flows forth from article 12 of the Code de procédure civile.
See Cass. 1re civ., 12 July 2005, 03-19725 (unpublished): 'que l'arrêt attaqué a rejeté cette demande en considérant qu'elle n'avait pas été introduite dans le délai de l'article 1648 du Code civil; Attendu qu'en statuant ainsi, sans rechercher, comme elle en avait l'obligation aux termes de l'alinéa 2 de l'article 12 du nouveau Code de procédure civile, si l'inexactitude du kilométrage figurant au compteur ainsi que dans le certificat de cession remis par le vendeur ne devait pas être qualifiée comme un manquement de ce dernier à son obligation de délivrer un véhicule conforme aux spécifications convenues entre les parties, ce qui aurait exclu l'application de l'article 1648 du Code civil, la cour d'appel n'a pas légalement justifié sa décision'; Cass. 1re civ., 24 January 2006, 04-11903 (unpublished); the Cour de Cassion also frequently interprets a supposed vice cachée as non-performance in order to cirumvent the short limitation of article 1648. See Cass. 1re civ., 29 January 2002, Bulletin 2002, I, no. 35, p. 27; Cass. 3e civ., 6 October 2004, Bulletin 2004, III, no. 167, p. 153; Cass. 1re civ., 15 May 2007, Bulletin 2007, I, no. 192.
79 Hondius, Preadvies, p. 4.
80 For an overview of pros and cons see Calais-Auloy, 'Une nouvelle garantie', p. 710.
81 Viney, 'Quel domaine', pp. 1497-1501.
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