Judicial Judge Competence in SPIC Disputes

Extract

[...] Finally, this solution has a very important practical interest: the judicial judge is the natural judge of disputes between a SPIC and its users, which avoids conflicts of jurisdiction and successive referrals between orders of jurisdiction. By reaffirming the competence of the judicial judge, both for contractual relationships and for possible extra-contractual liability, the Council of State ensures consistency in the decisions it makes between the uses of a SPIC and public persons, thereby providing a better legal security with therefore a better predictability of the law than before the administrative judge, more inclined to reversals. [...]

[...] The legal qualification of the territorial authority does not seem to have posed any difficulty and has not been challenged as a public person, executing in this case a public sanitation service falling within the regime of public services with an industrial and commercial character, as recalled by Article L.2224-1 of the General Code of Territorial Collectivities. However, the legal qualification of the approved person was the subject of a lively pragmatic demonstration before arriving at its character as a user of a SPIC. The Conflict Tribunal, in this regard, has made the distinction between the different roles that it exercised within the framework of its approval. In fact, its legal status depends on the role it had when it committed the error that was attributed to it. [...]

[...] We are therefore in the presence of a double competence of the judicial jurisdiction that the Council is trying to establish. This reinforcement of the competence of the judicial judge is perceived with the use of "au surplus" which demonstrates an accumulation of elements even subsidiary and not necessary to settle but which are nonetheless taken into account." This decision of the Council of State, by consecrating and reinforcing the competence of the judicial judge, is therefore seen as opportune for private individuals who act within the framework of a public service. [...]

[...] The applicant continued by lodging a complaint with the Lille Administrative Court, which, by a judgment of 12 November 2021, referred the case back to the TC on the basis of the second paragraph of Article 32 of the decree of 27 February 2015. Is the administrative jurisdiction competent to rule on disputes between a licensed professional using a public industrial and commercial service (SPIC) and a territorial collectivity? The TC first responds by stating that public sanitation services are financially managed as SPICs under Article L. 2224-11 of the Code of Territorial Collectivities. [...]

[...] Thus, the TC responds that when a territorial collectivity, under Article L. 2224-8 of the General Code of Territorial Collectivities, "decides to allow approved persons to deposit in a wastewater treatment plant the materials they have collected from non-collective installations, the approved person must be considered as a user of this public service. Consequently, and in view of the private law relationships arising from the contract that binds the SPIC to its users, disputes between them must fall within the competence of the judicial jurisdiction." The Court of Conflicts, by granting jurisdiction to the judicial judge, made a decision that seemed appropriate in view of the legal qualification of the parties to the dispute leading to a welcome preference for the jurisdiction of the judicial judge (II). [...]