The Court:

Given that in 1981 M. Pirmamod sold to Mme Guichard, a fellow parapsychologist, several works and other items relating to the occult, that the bill for 52,875 francs dated 29 December 1982 not having been paid, M. Pirmamod obtained a judicial order for payment which was contested by Mme Guichard, and that the judgment under attack (Paris, 24 November 1987) dismissed M. Pirmamod’s claim on the ground that the sale had an unlawful cause;

Given that M. Pirmamod criticises the judgment on the ground first, that the cause of a contract of sale lies not in the use which the purchaser proposes to make of the property sold but in the transfer of such property, so that the Court violated articles 1131, 1133 and 1589 Code civil in taking account of the supposed intention of the purchaser, and secondly that in avoiding a contract for everyday objects on the ground that they could be used to deceive third parties whereas the unlawful and central aim must be one common to both parties regardless of the way the purchaser intends to use the property, the Court again violated those articles;

But given that while the transfer of the property sold may be the cause of the seller’s obligation, the cause of the contract of sale itself is the predominant purpose of the parties, without which the purchaser would not have entered the contract, and that having found in this case that the main purpose of the contract was to permit the practice of soothsaying and fortune-telling contrary to the offence punishable under article R.34 of the Criminal Code, the Court of Appeal was quite right to infer that this cause, rooted in a criminal offence, was of an unlawful character;

Given furthermore that M. Pirmamod himself was a soothsayer like Mme Guichard, whom he regarded as his disciple, he could not be unaware that his sale to her of fortune-telling equipment was intended to help her practise as a soothsayer, so that the Court of Appeal had no need to inquire, since the answer was plain from the facts, whether M. Pirmamod was aware of the principal motive actuating Mme Guichard,

From which it follows that the complaint is unfounded;

For these reasons DISMISSES the application for review.

Subsequent Developments

This note on subsequent developments reflects the legal situation as of October 2004.

Civ 1, 12 July 1989: "although the cause of an obligation by a purchaser lies in the transfer of property and the delivery of the thing sold, on the other hand the cause of a contract of sale consists in the determining motive, that is to say the one in the absence of which the purchaser would not be bound." Case law maintained.

Two judgments of 1996 given by the first civil chamber have confirmed this case law. In the one of the 11 June (unpublished, pourvoi no 94 15.614), the Cour de cassation confirmed an appeal judgment annulling on the ground of illegal cause, a franchise contract putting under the franchisee's charge practices constituting an illegal exercise in medicine, on the grounds that "without having to confirm all the elements constituting offences (delits) in the illegal practice of medicine or pharmacy, the appeal court accepted that the consent of Mme X... had been determined by the prospect of carrying on various practices called "alternative medicine" for implementing a method of slimming and rejuvenation, linking dietetics, acupuncture and auriculotherapy. Having accepted that these practices were prohibited by law within the framework of an activity like that put in place by the franchise contract, the appeal court was able to deduce from this that the cause of the contract was illegal". The second (1 October, Bull no 335), stated that "no objection can be raised to an appeal court, which had declared the nullity of an agreement for transfer of clientele concluded between two doctors, having further declared the nullity of a contract of loan agreed by the transferee, since this loan, having as its object the partial financing the purchase of the clientele, had a cause which was itself illegal. This cause was not merely the remittance of funds, but such a remittance with a view to an illegal operation".

Translation by Mr Raymond Youngs

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