Seconda, collective intelligence to elevate your legal expertise
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?
The first café-chouquettes!
Paris had its own stage of the Seconda Tour!
Despite a less than ideal date (thanks to the strikes), we held our first café-chouquettes of the year at Merci Jérôme.
Between coffees and croissants, we chatted with our colleagues:
to present our business to them,
to share a friendly moment before the hearing,
or to debrief on their arguments.
A big thank you in particular to Anne-Sophie Laguens, Boris Bozenthal, Chloé Chanut, Estelle Borckholtz and Lucie Lefebvre for braving the odds to join us!
And for the others… no worries: the café-chouquettes is destined to become a regular… even essential meeting.
Seconda shares her experience!
On September 17th, the Young Lawyers section of the ACE organized a training session at the Maison des Avocats (Lawyers' House) entitled:
" Start'Up Pack: creating and ensuring the growth of your firm ."
Seconda had the pleasure of participating!
Between a round table on the financing of procedures and another on the management of mass litigation, Fred-éric intervened alongside Alexandra Sabbe-Ferri to share their experience on structuring the offer of a firm responding to an identified need.
Through varied and complementary testimonies, this intervention made it possible to present the entire process of creating an offer: from the good idea to its launch and sustainability, including the essential phases of adaptation.
The event concluded with a special exchange session with the lawyers and future lawyers present, who were particularly attentive and curious.
Coming soon : The Seconda Tour is back on the road and we're sharing an interview with Néda and Fred-éric!
Sophie is one of our experts in civil liability law.
Secondant of the Month
Ce mois-ci, nous vous présentons Sophie Djololian !
Sophie pratique le droit à son image : avec sérieux et rigueur mais jamais sans créativité et humanité.
Il n’est donc pas étonnant qu’elle ait choisi le droit de la responsabilité civile comme terrain de jeu : « Je n’ai jamais accroché avec les matières déshumanisées. J’avais besoin d’un droit technique, certes, mais où la dimension humaine est au centre. »
Sa pratique tourne principalement autour des accidents de la circulation, de la responsabilité médicale et, plus largement, de toutes ces situations où un événement vient brutalement heurter une vie.
Derrière chaque affaire, il y a une victime, une histoire, une vie… Sophie rappelle que sa matière ne connaît pas de « petit » dossier :
« Les dossiers où il faut le plus batailler, ce sont souvent ceux où les séquelles physiques paraissent mineures mais changent complètement la vie de la victime. »
Elle se souvient par exemple d’un client, accidenté, sans perte de mobilité mais avec des douleurs chroniques incompatibles avec son métier physique. Provision initiale versée par l’assureur : 500 €. Chiffrage final du dossier par Sophie : près de 100.000 €.
Malgré un quotidien marqué par la vie des autres, Sophie déborde toujours d’énergie.
Alors qu’elle a tout juste accueilli un nourrisson dans sa vie, Sophie vient de donner naissance à un autre projet qui lui tenait à cœur : le lancement d’Orya Avocats, cabinet en droit de la santé et dommage corporel créé avec Agathe Niqueux.
Un duo complémentaire : Sophie sur les contentieux de responsabilité civile et médicale, et de dommage corporel, Agathe sur le quotidien des professionnels de santé avec les relations avec la CPAM (contrôles Sécu,…) et les établissements de santé, tout en ayant une pratique conjointe sur le volet disciplinaire de l’exercice de ces professionnels
Et Sophie ne se contente pas de pratiquer le droit : elle l’explique et le partage.
Formatrice régulière à l’HEDAC, elle intervient auprès de confrères en formation continue sur le dommage corporel — récemment sur les obligations des assureurs en matière d’accidents de la circulation, et, en octobre, sur la liquidation des préjudices corporels.
En préparation : une chronique pédagogique et ludique pour rendre sa matière sensible plus accessible à travers des références à la… pop culture !
Ah oui, on ne vous a pas dit, Sophie n’a pas seulement fait l’école des avocats, elle a aussi été à celle du one man show, alors on se dit que ce projet promet…restez connectés !
Question of the month
Loss of opportunity: what compensation is available?
Loss of opportunity is all the rage!
We know that, procedurally, in two plenary assembly rulings of June 27, 2025, the Court of Cassation established the principle that a judge who finds that there is a loss of opportunity to avoid harm cannot refuse compensation for that loss of opportunity on the grounds that only compensation for the entire harm has been requested.
But that's not all.
The current favour towards loss of opportunity is also observed with regard to the substantive conditions of its redress.
In several recent rulings, the Court of Cassation has held that compensation for loss of opportunity is not contingent upon proof of the seriousness of the lost opportunity. The lost opportunity must be real and not hypothetical, but the Court of Cassation no longer requires that it be serious.
What do you think of it?
Should we fear that this relaxation will lead, under the guise of classifying loss of opportunity, to compensation for damages that are too uncertain?
In the event of a non-serious loss of opportunity, would civil liability then shift from a compensatory logic to a primarily punitive one?
What then of the principle that the essence of civil liability is to restore the balance destroyed by the damage and to place the victim in the situation that would be theirs without the harmful act?
To these concerns, it can be countered that , according to case law, compensation for loss of opportunity must be measured by the lost opportunity itself and cannot be equal to the benefit that this opportunity would have provided had it materialized. Thus, the loss of an opportunity deemed minor would, in any case, only entitle the victim to very limited compensation. This provides a safeguard, maintaining a strict correlation between compensation and the harm suffered and preserving the principle of full compensation.
Is another repair system conceivable ?
Yes, says administrative law.
Apart from medical liability, an administrative judge who finds a loss of opportunity will award the victim compensation equal to the benefit they would have received had the lost opportunity materialized, provided the lost opportunity was substantial. If, however, the lost opportunity is deemed insufficiently substantial, no compensation, even reduced, is awarded.
The logic of administrative law is thus that of all or nothing, different from that adopted by the French judicial judge, and similar to that enshrined, in particular, by English law.
So what to make of it?
Does a lost opportunity have to be significant to be worth repairing? And if so, to what extent?
Avo-plumes! The debate is open.
Our Secondants in the news
Bérénice Bauduin
Find in issue 2150 of the Semaine sociale Lamy of September 8, 2025 Bérénice's reflection on the possible existence of a "collectivisation" which would be common to institutional moral harassment and ambient sexual harassment.
Bérénice refers to the two rulings of the criminal chamber (appeals no. 22-87.145 and 24-81.644) which have in common that they have changed the contours of both moral harassment and sexual harassment.
Bérénice is questioning the classification of the offences but also their civil consequences.
Find the full article on Lamyline (accessible by subscription) .
Yann Heyraud
The Court of Cassation issued a ruling on June 25 (24-10.440) regarding the famous "Lidl tax".
As a reminder, this "tax" had been requested by Leclerc from suppliers providing Lidl, in reaction to a hard discount strategy implemented by the German distribution giant.
In its ruling, the commercial chamber held that the Lidl tax could not be controlled via the concept of "uncompensated (or manifestly disproportionate) advantage", as this was directly linked to the purchase-sale transaction.
The ruling having been made with reference to the old provision relating to the advantage without consideration (article L. 442-6, I, 1° of the commercial code), Yann opens the debate: would the position of the High Court be the same with the new text (article L. 442-1, I, 1° of the commercial code), more open and not limited to the "commercial service actually rendered"?
His commentary can be found in the columns of Lefebvre Dalloz.
Agathe Niqueux and Sophie Djololian
We are delighted to share the announcement of the creation of the Orya Avocats firm, founded by Sophie Djololian and Agathe Niqueux.
After sharing an office with a lawyer admitted to the Council of State and the Court of Cassation, and training together and then separately in health and liability law, they decided to combine their skills to offer their clients comprehensive support in these areas, including:
in civil liability law, alongside victims of personal injury (road accidents/life accidents etc.)
alongside independent healthcare professionals (audits of practice contracts, support before professional bodies, social security litigation, etc.).
We wish them a smooth transition and much success in this new adventure!
A film, an exhibition, a restaurant…
Who was Léon Blum and why, despite his extraordinary commitment, is his political legacy so weak?
9 hours is the time Philippe Colin has given himself to try to restore Léon Blum to the place he deserves in history.
Through testimonies from historians and period archives, this podcast retraces the history of a major figure in French political life and questions why Léon Blum occupies such a modest place in our memory, far from reflecting the importance of his legacy.
Although Léon Blum is mainly remembered for leading the Popular Front and making paid leave more widespread for all employees, he was also — and perhaps above all (or at least after his passion for literature) — a man of law.
Léon Blum thus had a career of almost 25 years within the Council of State! He was government commissioner for the famous rulings "Compagnie générale française des tramways" of 1910, "Granits porphyroïdes des Vosges" of 1912, "Époux Lemonnier" of 1918, or for other decisions which contributed to shaping administrative case law.
Then, during the Riom trial, where he was brought with Édouard Daladier before the Supreme Court of Justice (a puppet jurisdiction created by Philippe Pétain for the occasion), Léon Blum defended himself so well that Hitler himself had to intervene to put an end to this charade which was turning against the Vichy regime.
Described as a dandy and often mocked for his thin voice, Léon Blum possessed immense moral and physical courage: he notably survived an attack by far-right militants that almost cost him his life in 1936, presented himself in Vichy in 1940 to confront Pétain and returned alive from Buchenwald… and this, thanks to Jeanne Reichenbach, who further demonstrates that behind every great man there is an exceptional woman.
I promise you won't regret a minute of listening to these nine episodes, which constitute a monumental work worthy of what Léon Blum was: a humanist with a fine and nuanced mind.
Thank you for reading.
You know everything for this month, see you in October!
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
