{"id":645,"date":"2025-03-27T12:14:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T12:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cartiermeyniel.com\/?p=645"},"modified":"2026-07-10T08:56:25","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T08:56:25","slug":"french-supreme-court-clarifies-the-bridge-procedure-under-article-873-1-of-the-french-code-of-civil-procedure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cartiermeyniel.com\/en\/french-supreme-court-clarifies-the-bridge-procedure-under-article-873-1-of-the-french-code-of-civil-procedure\/","title":{"rendered":"French Supreme Court Clarifies the &#8220;Bridge Procedure&#8221; Under Article 873-1 of the French Code of Civil Procedure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.legifrance.gouv.fr\/juri\/id\/JURITEXT000051367831\">Cass. com., 19 mars 2025, n\u00b0 22-24.761<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The French Supreme Court has recently provided important guidance on the operation of the \u201cbridge procedure\u201d under Article 873-1 of the French Code of Civil Procedure. Following an opinion from the Second Civil Chamber, the Commercial Chamber clarified the mechanism allowing the President of the Commercial Court (or the Economic Activities Court), in cases of urgency, to refer a matter directly from summary proceedings to proceedings on the merits, without requiring the claimant to commence fresh proceedings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Court&#8217;s ruling: The Court held that, once the case has been referred to the court hearing the merits through the bridge procedure, the parties may raise incidental, additional or counterclaims, even if those claims were not previously submitted in the summary proceedings, pursuant to Article 70 of the French Code of Civil Procedure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why does this matter? The decision resolves a long-standing uncertainty created by a line of case law that prohibited new claims after a case had been transferred through the bridge procedure, most notably a decision of 7 December 2000 (Second Civil Chamber, No. 98-16.399).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That earlier decision\u2014rendered before the bridge procedure was formally codified and when it existed only as a judicial practice\u2014was open to criticism for two reasons. First, there was no legal basis for departing from the general procedural rules governing new claims. Secondly, its reasoning led to an impractical result: taken to its logical conclusion, it could have rendered inadmissible virtually every claim advanced after the referral, since proceedings on the merits are, by their very nature, distinct from summary proceedings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Key takeaway: This welcome decision provides a legally sound, coherent and pragmatic interpretation of the bridge procedure, enhancing both procedural efficiency and the effective protection of litigants&#8217; rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Read our LinkedIn post on the subject <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/posts\/marie-laure-cartier-6b94198_un-arr%C3%AAt-bienvenu-activity-7313499522834259968-h9c0\/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAADCnPUQBug3OFMHYXu-QdT5cmY2JJIJQ-_w\">here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cass. com., 19 mars 2025, n\u00b0 22-24.761 The French Supreme Court has recently provided important guidance on the operation of the \u201cbridge procedure\u201d under Article 873-1 of the French Code of Civil Procedure. Following an opinion from the Second Civil Chamber, the Commercial Chamber clarified the mechanism allowing the President of the Commercial Court (or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cartiermeyniel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cartiermeyniel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cartiermeyniel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cartiermeyniel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cartiermeyniel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cartiermeyniel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":646,"href":"https:\/\/cartiermeyniel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions\/646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cartiermeyniel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cartiermeyniel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cartiermeyniel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}