Background
The complainant, Mme [G] [X], filed a simple complaint on 30 May 2024 alleging forgery, use of forgeries, and fraud (faux, usage de faux, escroquerie) in connection with events said to have occurred between 2016 and 2018 — chiefly involving documents used in civil eviction and enforcement proceedings brought against her by her landlord. That complaint was closed without further action on 11 September 2024. On 2 September 2024, before receiving that closure notice, Mme [X] lodged a formal complaint and constituted herself as a civil party (plainte avec constitution de partie civile) against persons unknown on the same charges.
By order of 3 January 2025, the examining magistrate (juge d’instruction) declined to open a formal investigation (ordonnance de non-informer). The Paris Court of Appeal’s Chambre de l’instruction (First Section) confirmed that order on 19 November 2025 on two grounds: first, that the limitation period for the offences had expired before the civil-party complaint was filed; second, that even taking the alleged facts as proven, they could not support any criminal characterisation, given that a civil court had already rejected the complainant’s inscription-of-forgery (inscription de faux) challenge directed at the same documents.
Mme [X] petitioned the Court of Cassation, raising two grounds of cassation. She argued, in essence, that the Court of Appeal had misapplied the rules on suspension of the limitation period and had wrongly excluded criminal liability without conducting any investigative acts.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Cassation quashed the Paris ruling in its entirety on both grounds. On the first ground, the Court held that Article 85, paragraph 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure constitutes a legal obstacle (obstacle de droit) that prevents the complainant from acting, within the meaning of Article 9-3 of the same Code. As a result, the limitation period is suspended in favour of the victim from the date of the simple complaint until the prosecutor’s response or, at the latest, the expiry of the three-month waiting period prescribed by Article 85. The Court traced this principle to the parliamentary history of the Law of 27 February 2017 reforming criminal prescription, concluding that when Article 3 of that Law deleted the final sentence of Article 85 (which had expressly mentioned the suspension), it did so purely as a coordination measure to remove a provision made redundant by the new general suspension rule in Article 9-3 — not to abolish the suspension itself.
Applying that analysis to the facts, the Court found that the forgery offences (committed in late 2016 and early 2017) were indeed prescribed by the time of the civil-party complaint, but that the use-of-forgery and fraud offences (committed on 31 May 2018) were not. The limitation period for those offences began running on 1 June 2018; it was suspended from 30 May 2024, the date of the simple complaint, until 30 August 2024, the end of the three-month window — meaning the civil-party complaint of 2 September 2024 was lodged before prescription was complete.
On the second ground, the Court reiterated the settled principle that an examining magistrate seised of a valid civil-party complaint is obliged to investigate, regardless of the prosecutor’s submissions. The only exceptions, under Article 86(4), are where the facts are legally incapable of prosecution for reasons affecting the public prosecution itself, or where — even if proven — they cannot attract any criminal characterisation. The Court held that the Chambre de l’instruction had violated this principle by excluding all criminal characterisation without performing any investigative acts and by relying solely on the outcome of civil proceedings, which do not bind the criminal courts.
Key Takeaways
- The three-month waiting period imposed by Article 85, paragraph 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure before a victim may file a civil-party complaint constitutes a legal obstacle under Article 9-3, suspending the criminal limitation period for the entire duration of that wait — notwithstanding the 2017 reform that deleted the express reference to suspension from Article 85.
- The 2017 deletion was a pure coordination measure; the legislative history makes clear that Parliament intended to preserve, not abolish, the pre-existing suspension rule, now subsumed within the general provision of Article 9-3.
- An examining magistrate and the Chambre de l’instruction cannot refuse to investigate a civil-party complaint on the basis that the alleged facts carry no criminal characterisation without first conducting investigative acts; a prior adverse civil-court ruling on the same documents does not bind the criminal courts and cannot alone justify a refusal to investigate.
- The case is remanded to the Paris Chambre de l’instruction, differently composed, for fresh consideration on both the limitation and the merits issues in respect of the use-of-forgery and fraud charges.
Why It Matters
This decision settles a point of procedural law that had become uncertain following the 2017 prescription reform. By confirming that the Article 85 waiting period still suspends the limitation period — through Article 9-3 rather than through the now-deleted sentence of Article 85 — the Court of Cassation preserves an important protective mechanism for victims who must exhaust the preliminary complaint procedure before they can access an examining magistrate. Practitioners advising clients on time-sensitive forgery, fraud, or document-manipulation claims can now rely on this suspension to avoid prescription where the simple complaint was filed within the limitation period even if the civil-party complaint followed slightly later.
The ruling also reinforces the mandatory character of judicial instruction once a civil-party complaint is validly filed. Courts of appeal may not short-circuit that process by deferring to civil-court findings or by engaging in an abstract merits assessment untethered to any investigative record; doing so violates both the Code of Criminal Procedure and the independence of criminal from civil jurisdiction.