In a decision dated April 2, 2025, the French Supreme Court confirmed its case law according to which a jurisdiction clause agreed between professionals cannot be invalidated by overriding mandatory provisions, even if they are applicable on the merits.
In the case at hand, a natural person opened an account on the social network Instagram for professional and commercial purposes. The general terms and conditions of use of the network, operated by the Irish company Meta, provided for a clause conferring exclusive jurisdiction to the Irish courts in the event of disputes relating to access to or use of the service for professional purposes.
The user, claiming to have been the victim of hacking, brought proceedings against Meta before the Paris Judicial Court, which declared that it had no jurisdiction pursuant to the above-mentioned clause. The Paris Court of Appeal upheld this reasoning.
The user appealed to the French Supreme Court, arguing that Article 1171 of the Civil Code, which provides that clauses creating a significant imbalance in standard-form contracts must be deemed unwritten, was a mandatory rule that should prevail over the disputed jurisdiction clause. In the user’s view, since Meta’s general terms and conditions were not negotiable, the jurisdiction clause created a significant imbalance and should therefore be deemed unwritten.
The French Supreme Court dismissed the appeal on the grounds that “Article 25.1 of the Brussels I bis Regulation […] does not provide for the reservation of mandatory rules,” so that the validity of the clause must be assessed in accordance with the law of the court designated by the clause (Irish law, in this case).
