ABSTRACT
The Levages Prestations Services company carried on the business of leasing lifting gear and providing related services. In May 1983, it had recourse to an employment agency for temporary staff with which it signed five contracts for the provision of manual labour. Subsequently, it refused to pay four out of five invoices, initially because it disagreed with the number of hours charged and then on the ground that they were unsigned and did not bear the company stamp. On 18 September 1984, the Paris Commercial Court ordered it to pay the agency. The applicant company lodged a criminal complaint against a person or persons unknown for forgery of commercial instruments, and against the employment agency for aiding and abetting and for making use of forged instruments. It appealed to the Paris Court of Appeal against the Commercial Court’s judgment and made an application for the appeal to be stayed pending the outcome of the criminal proceedings instituted after it had lodged its complaint. On 1 October 1986, the Court of Appeal made an interlocutory order staying the appeal. On 24 December 1987, the investigating judge ruled that there was no case to answer in respect of the two criminal complaints. The appeal proceedings resumed in the Paris Court of Appeal, which upheld the Commercial Court’s judgment on 28 September 1989. On 1 December, the applicant company appealed on points of law to the Court of Cassation. In the proceedings in the Court of Cassation, the applicant company was represented by a member of the Conseil d’Etat and Court of Cassation Bar, as required by law. On 1 December 1992, the Court of Cassation held that the appeal was inadmissible as the applicant company had not, in accordance with the procedure rules, produced a copy of the judgment of 1 October 1986 which the Court of Cassation held to form an integral part of the judgment under appeal. The applicant company complained that its right to a fair hearing had been infringed when the Court of Cassation of its own motion ruled that the company’s appeal on points of law was inadmissible. Comm found by majority V 6(1).
