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A month with Seconda
Welcome to the Seconda newsletter!
As every month, we share our latest news and that of our Secondants, we open up the debate on a legal issue and we introduce you to a work, a place or a person, connected with the world of law, that has left a mark on us and that we recommend to you !
Enjoy the read and all your feedback is welcome!
What's new at Seconda?
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A recap of our webinar from July 8th!
Alongside Artur'In, we had the pleasure of co-hosting a webinar on the topic:
" The secret of successful lawyers: knowing how to surround yourself with the right people ."
Our goal: to show you how the scientific support offered by Seconda can become a real growth driver for your firm.
For 45 minutes, we shared concrete cases illustrating how, by gaining expertise and saving time with Seconda, you can move upmarket and handle higher-stakes cases.
Were you unable to attend? The replay is available here .
Coming soon: The start of the academic year is already shaping up to be intense, notably with our participation in a round table organised by the ACE Young Lawyers Association, as well as the return of the Seconda Tour to the provinces...but also to Paris!
Andreas is our expert in English law.
Secondant of the Month
This month, we present Andreas Giannakopoulos !
Based in London, Andreas is a Barrister specializing in private international law and trusts. In other words, his daily work is filled with highly technical cases.
These days, Andreas is immersed in a case involving a dispute unfolding in Switzerland and Guernsey concerning an inheritance matter. " One of the crucial points concerns a stay of proceedings, linked to a Swiss procedure. We're dealing with issues of coordination between jurisdictions, which can affect both the recognition of foreign judgments and mechanisms such as antisuit injunctions ."
This last measure, typically Anglo-Saxon, aims to prevent a party from bringing a case before a foreign court, in this case, a French one. " It's a perfect illustration of the tensions between continental approaches, often more cautious, and the British approach, which is more liberal with regard to the parties' wishes. "
Andreas also points out that this divergence in approaches is reflected in the analysis of asymmetric jurisdiction clauses. “ There is a real disconnect between the reasoning of the European Court of Human Rights, which is close to the position of the French Court of Cassation and aims to be consistent with the principles of the Brussels I bis Regulation, and English practice, where the autonomy of the parties remains central. The criticism that can be made is this lack of uniformity in the treatment of clauses, especially in situations involving non-EU states. ”
Andreas also mentions a recent ruling by the British Supreme Court which refused to recognize a Russian bankruptcy judgment, which was intended to apply to all of the debtor's assets, including real estate located in England.
And Andreas could tell many more stories of this magnitude…
With a dual French-British legal and linguistic background, Andreas enjoys exploring issues every day that allow him to delve deeper into both the specificities of these two legal systems and their points of convergence!
Question of the month
Clauses that reduce the time limit for taking legal action to less than one year.
Many agreements (promises of sale, letters of engagement from chartered accountants, telecommunications contracts, etc.) contain clauses reducing to a few months the time to take legal action for specific performance or liability.
What is the value of these provisions with regard to Article 2254 of the Civil Code, which provides that the limitation period may be shortened by the parties, but that " it may not however be reduced to less than one year "?
A body of case law is in favour of the legality of these clauses.
Its foundation?
These clauses would not be abbreviated prescription clauses, but conventional forfeiture clauses.
Ah…and so?
Well, according to article 2220 of the civil code, limitation periods are exempt from the rules of prescription…So the barrier of article 2254 is no longer applicable.
Clever? A bit hasty, replies the doctrine.
First, we read that, in the mind of the legislator, article 2220 does not refer to conventional foreclosures but to special legal foreclosures.
Next, article 2254 imposes a minimum period of one year for the parties to take legal action.
It would be a dead letter if they could disregard it under the cover of a qualification of conventional foreclosure, a fortiori when this qualification does not result from the express terms of the clause but from its interpretation by the judge.
Beyond that, we see the emergence of Article 6§1 of the ECHR.
Less than a year to assert one's rights in court, sometimes a month.
Is this not a disproportionate infringement of the right of access to a judge, which the State would have a positive obligation to prevent?
Avo-plumes! The debate is open.
Our Secondants in the news
Jean-Baptiste Barbièri
Jean -Baptiste, a professor of company law in Toulouse, has been particularly prolific lately. Here are some of his comments.
In the latest issue of the Revue des sociétés, Jean-Baptiste puts into perspective his analysis of a judgment rendered on February 12 (no. 23-22.414) with another judgment of June 18 (no. 24-14.311).
He notes that the combination of the two decisions could not only invalidate the substitution clause, but also prevent the resumption of the act according to traditional methods.
It is then in the JCP E that Jean-Baptiste comments on an "interesting but very surprising" ruling (no. 23-86.857), in which the Court judges that the absence of a summons to a meeting does not constitute the offense of not communicating the accounts... even though in the absence of a summons, no presentation of the accounts is possible.
He also draws from this ruling a clarification concerning the action ut singuli: Jean-Baptiste recalls that the simple involvement of the manager in a personal capacity and the service of conclusions on the company are not sufficient to validly characterize the action.
Finally, Jean-Baptiste comments on a ruling of May 7 (no. 23-20.471) which states that the creditor does not have the capacity to act in the appointment of a provisional administrator.
Jean-Baptiste questions this rule because the same Commercial Chamber had considered a few months earlier that any interested party had an interest in taking action for this action (no. 22-20.526).
According to Jean-Baptiste, this restriction is explained, according to the Letter from the Commercial Chamber, by "the particularly serious and disruptive nature for the social functioning of the appointment of a provisional administrator and by the resulting need to confine this measure within narrow limits".
His commentary can be found in the Dalloz Collection 2025 (p.1326).
Marie Fernet
Our customs law specialist has prepared a back-to-school season packed with training courses!
First, on September 9th, Marie is offering an online training course on the theme "Making customs monitoring a strategic lever".
While international trade has never been tense and uncertain, companies can no longer afford to wait for information to come in. However, Marie points out that customs monitoring often remains rudimentary, undocumented, or even non-existent.
In this paid 2.5-hour training course, Marie will provide you with methods, tools and reflexes to structure effective monitoring, without spending all your time on it.
The link for registration is here.
Then, on September 30, Marie will co-host, with Raphaëlle Jeannel, a lawyer specializing in environmental law, a free webinar entitled "Waste in transit: mastering environmental and customs obligations".
The webinar offers a clear and operational analysis to enlighten companies operating waste flows in an increasingly complex, changing, and high-stakes environment.
To register, click here.
A film, an exhibition, a restaurant…
South Korea is among the countries in the world with the highest youth suicide rate.
Harassment, in all its forms, is a societal scourge that the justice system struggles to address, particularly in schools.
South Korea is a perfect example.
In 2023, more than 60,000 South Korean students were victims of school bullying, a figure that has doubled in five years.
In the same year, a Korean woman, Pyo Ye-rim, decided to speak out about this growing scourge, which had long remained taboo.
The documentary highlights all the difficulties faced by Pyo Ye-rim, herself a victim of harassment, in making her voice heard in a country where the race for performance and the culture of the collective take precedence over the violence suffered by individuals… even in the most serious cases.
It shows parents distraught in the face of their victimized children's despair, and powerless when the harassers do not hesitate to threaten them with defamation lawsuits in order to discourage them from taking any legal action.
Although a boarding school has been created to collect the most serious cases, and a file is supposed to be put in place by 2026 to prohibit access to the university for people found guilty of harassment, there is still a long way to go.
The focus is on revising the limitation period, currently limited to three years.
Also presented at the Justice Documentary Festival, the report is available until January 20, 2028 on the Arte platform.
Thank you for reading.
You know everything for this month, we're taking a summer break and we'll see you in September!
And to make sure you don't miss anything, remember to subscribe , for those who haven't already!
See you very soon!
Fred-Eric and Neda
