Background
M. [F] is a vine grower in the Charente department whose vineyard plots suffered damage caused by wild boar. He declared the damage to the Fédération départementale des chasseurs de la Charente (the Federation), the body responsible under French environmental law for compensating agricultural losses caused by game animals. Assessors appointed by the Federation — one departmental and one national — carried out an appraisal and produced a provisional damage assessment on 18 May 2020, which M. [F] signed. The signature was made, according to the courts below, without any reservation.
M. [F] disputed the provisional assessment and commissioned his own non-adversarial survey by a bailiff (Maître [X]), conducted over four visits in June and July 2020. On 14 October 2020, having failed to reach agreement with the Federation, he brought proceedings before the civil court seeking annulment of the provisional assessment and full compensation for his losses. The trial court and, on appeal, the Bordeaux Court of Appeal (First Civil Chamber, 18 January 2024) rejected his claims entirely and ordered him to pay the Federation €400 in damages.
The Bordeaux court reasoned that M. [F] had signed the provisional assessment without reservation, that the bailiff’s observations were not contradictory and had not been carried out by a vine specialist, and — crucially — that he had not requested a judicial expert. Because he had chosen the flat-rate administrative compensation route rather than alleging fault on the Federation’s part, the court simply dismissed his case.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Cassation quashed the Bordeaux judgment in its entirety. It held that Articles L. 426-1 and R. 426-24 of the Environmental Code together impose a mandatory obligation on the judge: whenever conciliation between the parties fails in a judicial compensation proceeding for game-related crop damage, the judge must appoint an expert — charged with recording the state of the harvest, the extent of the damage, the origin of the game, the cause of the damage, and whether the game population is excessive. This obligation applies in all cases and arises by operation of law; it does not depend on either party making such a request.
By dismissing M. [F]’s claims on the ground that he had not himself sought a judicial expert, the Court of Appeal violated both provisions. The cassation of the main holdings automatically carried with it — under Article 624 of the Code of Civil Procedure — the ancillary order requiring M. [F] to pay damages to the Federation, given the necessary dependency between those rulings.
The Court of Cassation remanded the case to a differently constituted panel of the Bordeaux Court of Appeal, awarded M. [F] €3,000 under Article 700 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and taxed the Federation with the costs of the cassation proceedings.
Key Takeaways
- Under Articles L. 426-1 and R. 426-24 of the Environmental Code, once conciliation fails in litigation over game-caused crop damage, the judge is legally required to appoint a judicial expert — this duty is not contingent on a party’s request and cannot be bypassed by noting the claimant’s failure to ask for one.
- A farmer’s signature on a Federation provisional damage assessment, even without written reservations, does not bar him from challenging that assessment in subsequent judicial proceedings.
- A non-adversarial bailiff’s survey commissioned unilaterally by the claimant is insufficient, on its own, to overturn the Federation’s assessment — but this does not excuse the court from ordering the mandatory judicial expertise before adjudicating the compensation claim.
- Under Article 624 of the Code of Civil Procedure, cassation of the principal rulings automatically sweeps away ancillary orders that are necessarily dependent on them, such as a costs or damages award in favor of the winning party below.
Why It Matters
This decision clarifies a procedural obligation of considerable practical importance for French hunting-law litigation. Agricultural operators whose crops are damaged by wild boar or other large game frequently dispute the adequacy of Federation damage assessments, yet may be unaware of — or unable to afford — a formal request for judicial expertise. The Court of Cassation’s ruling confirms that the judge’s duty to appoint an expert is mandatory and ex officio: courts may not resolve game-damage compensation disputes on the merits without first obtaining an independent technical assessment, regardless of how the parties have framed their pleadings.
The ruling also provides a measure of protection to farmers who sign provisional assessments under the administrative compensation procedure. Signing without explicit reservation does not, as a matter of law, strip the claimant of the right to have damage independently verified through the judicial expert mechanism once proceedings are commenced. Hunters’ federations and their insurers should therefore expect that any contested compensation case that reaches a court will require a court-ordered expertise before judgment can be entered.