♥️♥️ If you liked this video, don't hesitate to like it, comment and subscribe so you don't miss the next ones ♥️♥️ If you want to follow our news, join us on our networks: 📸 instagram: / filezdroit 🐦 twitter: / droitfilez ⚠️ Warning ⚠️ The sole purpose of this video is to help you understand judgments that are sometimes quite complex. They are in no way intended to replace the doctrine which constitutes a solid source of knowledge. Do not forget that plagiarism is prohibited and severely punished in the academic context. It is therefore essential to cite your sources and put your quotes in quotation marks. ⤵️ Here is the text of the video ⤵️: today we are tackling a recent criminal law ruling whose scope has serious consequences for any legal entity. This is the so-called "merger-absorption" ruling of the Criminal Division of November 25, 2020. Before we begin, we would of course remind you that, just like natural persons, legal entities under private law are criminally liable for any offense that may be committed on their behalf by one of their managers according to Article 121-2 of the Criminal Code. Thus, if it is logically impossible to impose a prison sentence on a legal person, they may in principle be sentenced to a fine equal to five times that incurred by natural persons (article 132-38) 🡪 Facts Annoying facts = rigor It all started in 2002 with a fire in a warehouse belonging to a first company called "INTRADIS". It was an archive storage company. The latter was therefore summoned before the criminal court in November 2017, suspected of involuntary destruction of property belonging to others. INTRADIS was in reality a subsidiary of the parent company called "RECALL FRANCE". However, in March 2017, 8 months before the hearing before the criminal court, RECALL France and, by extension, its subsidiary INTRADIS, had been absorbed as part of a merger-absorption operation by a newly created company: "IRON MOUNTAIN". Finally, the Amiens Court of Appeal held IRON MOUNTAIN liable for the fire initially committed by INTRADIS, in a judgment of September 26, 2018. However, its representatives filed an appeal in cassation, since according to them, although the offense was constituted, IRON MOUNTAIN could not be held liable for acts committed by INTRADIS. Is it possible to transfer the liability of an absorbed company to its absorbing company? Reminder: According to the principle of personality of the penalty set out in Article 121-1 of the Criminal Code, "no one is liable except for his own actions". Therefore, it was consistent case law to consider that the principle of personality of the penalty applies identically to legal persons. Thus, when a merger-absorption is carried out between two companies. The newly created absorbing company must then be considered as a separate legal entity. Until this judgment, it was therefore considered that the disappearance of the legal personality of the absorbed entity following the merger extinguished its criminal liability for acts committed prior to the transaction. But the influence of European law will be felt, and the Court of Justice of the European Union (case C-343/13 of March 5, 2015), then the European Court of Human Rights (October 24, 2019, Carrefour France v. France) each took turns reversing their case law by finally deciding that a merger by absorption results in the transfer to the absorbing company of fines imposed for offenses committed by the absorbed company before the merger. Under the impetus of European judges, criminal case law also changed course and abandoned its traditional anthropomorphic approach. This decision of November 25, 2020 therefore allows the Court of Cassation to reverse its case law, deciding "that in the event of a merger-absorption of a company by another company [...], the absorbing company may be criminally convicted [...] for acts constituting an offense committed by the absorbed company before the transaction". From now on, the merger-absorption will therefore no longer prevent the repression of a legal person, because it will be necessary to consider that the absorbed legal person is continued by the absorbing company. decision: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/juri/i...