The seller, a Scottish company, and the buyer, a French company, concluded a contract for the delivery of paper. The buyer failed to pay the price. The seller filed a suit before French courts for payment. After being condemned to payment under French domestic law, the buyer appealed, claiming that the Court had failed to apply CISG to the contract at hand.
The Court upheld the decision of the lower court and rejected the appeal. It held that CISG would be applicable to the contract, under Art. 3 of the 1955 The Hague Convention on the law applicable to international sales and Art. 1(1)(b) CISG, as the substantive law on international sales of French law, which is binding on French judges. However, CISG governs the contract unless the parties have excluded it according to Art. 6 CISG. Without further explanation, the Court interpreted Art. 6 CISG as to allow the parties to implicitly exclude the application of CISG by not invoking it before the Court, as it had happened in the case at hand.
|