Case number: 150
Article number: sales convention / 1(1)(a): 35
Thessaurs issue:
Country of decision: France
Year of decision: 1996
Type of decision: Judicial decision

Case 150: CISG 1(1)(a): 35
France: Court of Cassation (1st Civil Division)

23 January 1996

Soci‚t‚ Sacovini v. S.A.R.L. Les Fils de Henri Ramel

Published in French: Recueil Dalloz Sirey 1996, Jurisprudence, 334; [1996] UNILEX

Reported on in English: [1996] UNILEX

Commented on in French: Witz, Claude, Recueil Dalloz Sirey 1996, Jurisprudence, 334


The seller, Sacovini, a company with its place of business in Italy, concluded several contracts in 1988 for the sale of wine with French buyers. Having learned that adulterated Italian wine had been imported into France that same year, the buyers reported the matter to the Fraud Control Service. The latter concluded that the wine had indeed been adulterated.

The French dealers then brought an action before the S te Commercial Court and then before the Montpellier Court of Appeal, claiming avoidance of the sales contract relating to the disputed wine and demanding compensation for the material and moral damages that they had suffered.

The Court of Appeal, in accordance with French domestic law, declared avoided the sales contract pertaining to the consignments of wine, finding against the seller, on the ground that the latter had not honoured its contractual obligation to supply a wine conforming to the contract and of fair merchantable quality.

The Italian company, Sacovini, appealed against the decision without invoking application of the CISG. It objected to the fact that the Court of Appeal found against the seller by avoiding the contract, since, in its view, the supply of chaptalized wine could not constitute a breach of the seller's obligation. The seller further asserted that there was no causal relationship between the chaptalization of the wine and the alleged damage, since it had been established in the case of particular consignments that the wine had been rendered unfit for consumption as a result of the conditions in which it had been transported.

The Court of Cassation dismissed the appeal. It found that the disputed contract had been an international sale of goods falling within the scope of application of CISG, which had entered into force on 1 January 1988 between France and Italy, and that the Court if Appeal had respected the provisions of that treaty, in particular its article 35, when finding that Sacovini, by supplying chaptalized wine, had not performed its obligation to supply goods in conformity with the contract. Finally, regarding the absence of a causal relationship between the chaptalization of the wine and the alleged damage, the Court of Cassation agreed with the ruling of the trial court according to which it was solely the treatment of the wine that had rendered it unfit for consumption.