Given that the Société de Produits Céramiques de l’Anjou (PCA), which supplied bricks for the construction of the walls of the apartment block being constructed by SCI Asnières Normandie, criticises the decision below (Paris, 5 May 1983) for holding it liable in part for the cracks which appeared in the walls and required it to pay the syndicate of the condominium part of the cost of repair whereas, it maintains, (1) although any alleged fault of the seller of materials must take into account the contractual specifications insisted on by the main contractor, here the ESCA firm, yet the court treated such terms as irrelevant and so violated articles 1147 and 1382 Code civil, (2) the court could not, while basing itself on liability in tort, invoke the presumption that the professional seller of goods knows of any defects in the materials but should have asked whether the manufacturer really knew of the purpose for which they were bought; in the case at hand the sole cause of the cracks was they were built into walls whose foundation was inadequate and unstable, (3) the court held that the bricks were not of the right quality by reference to quality standards issued after the construction was complete and in failing to inquire whether they were not in order at the time of delivery it failed to identify the fault of the seller, (4) the judgment ignored arguments to the effect that the fragility of the bricks was due not to any inherent lack of quality but to the improper use to which they were put by the contractor, amounting to a fault on the part of a third party which excludes the liability of the seller; and finally (5) in failing to ascertain whether the major cause of the trouble was not solely the lack of a proper foundation rather than the alleged defect in the materials the judgment did not deal, otherwise than by mere assertion, with the causal link between the alleged nonconformity of the bricks and the damage in suit;

But given that the developer is entitled to all the rights and claims attaching to the thing vested in the main contractor, just as the subpurchaser is entitled to those of his seller, and so has a direct contractual claim against the manufacturer if the goods delivered fall short of what the contract requires; and given that the court of appeal found that by reason of their faulty manufacture the bricks supplied by PCA were not as the contract required and that PCA was thus in breach of contract such that SCI Asnières Normandie, as developer, could claim damages until the time-bar at common law had run, and that this by itself justified its decision, so that none of the arguments in the application for review can be accepted;

For these reasons DISMISSES the application for review

Subsequent Developments

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

Assemblée plénière, 7 February 1986 : Several judgments delivered subsequently, principally by the third civil chamber, have confirmed and even extended this solution: Civ 3, 14 November 1991, Bull no 271 (contractual nature of the action by a site owner against the manufacturers and the sellers of materials used for a development), 26 May 1992, Bull no 168 ("a sub-purchaser has all the rights and rights of action attached to a thing which belonged to its creator and has a right of action in contract against the contractors founded on a breach of their obligations towards the site owner") or, more recently, Civ 3, 12 December 2001 (pourvoi no 00-14.671), which repeats exactly the solution put forward in 1986.

Translation by Raymond Youngs