Council of State Ruling on Judicial Competence for SPIC Disputes

Extract

[...] However, jurisprudence has gradually recognized that certain public services can be managed under conditions similar to those of private enterprises, which justifies their submission to private law and therefore, to the competence of the judicial judge. This distinction, is indeed established by the Bac d'Eloka decision (TC January 1921), which consecrated the existence of SPIC, in opposition to SPA. The decision here commented upon fully inscribes itself in this line. In fact, the Council of State recalls that the management of public sanitation services are 'financially managed like industrial and commercial services', in accordance with Article L. [...]

[...] must be regarded as having the quality of user.' Therefore, the dispute that opposes him to the territorial public establishment Plaine Commune falls within the jurisdiction of the judicial judge, since the damage is born from the functioning of the industrial and commercial service of sanitation. By this strict application of the user criterion, the judges confirm the traditional jurisprudence in the matter of SPIC. It recalls that disputes born from the relationship between an industrial and commercial service and its users return, by nature, to the jurisdiction of the judicial order, without the presence of a common work with a SPA affecting this distribution. [...]

[...] Council of State February 2025, n°494967 - Which jurisdiction is competent to settle a dispute arising from damages caused to a user by a mixed work that falls under both a SPA and a SPIC? The distinction between administrative public services and industrial and commercial public services is the basis for the distribution of competences between the administrative order and the judicial order. However, the presence of mixed works, such as unified sanitation networks, ultimately makes it difficult to distinguish this border. [...]

[...] In the event of a foreign cause to its operation, such as, for example, a failure affecting only the part of the network dedicated to rainwater, falling within a SPA, the competence could return to the administrative judge. Thus, despite a desire for unification, the contentiousness of the or mixed works demand always requires a fine appreciation of the the link between the damage and the service in question. Finally, the will of the Council of State is to rationalize the contentious issues of local public services while preserving the logic of the dual jurisdictional system. [...]

[...] This approach allows the Council of State to avoid any confusion between the responsibilities arising from the operation of a SPIC and those related to the maintenance of public works of an administrative nature. She joins the logic of the ruling Municipality of Saint-Priest-la-Plaine (22 Nov 1946), according to which the judicial judge is only competent for the damage caused to users by the execution of the public industrial and commercial service, excluding external damages to this functioning. But also the decision TC October 2009, Mr. [...]