A public land agency compulsorily purchases the premises of a scrap and metals recycling business, an activity subject to the French regime for classified installations (installations classées pour la protection de l’environnement, ICPE). Everything in the eviction compensation turns on one question: can the business relocate, or does the expropriation end it? The Court of Appeal finds relocation possible, relying on estate agents’ listings produced by the acquiring authority. On 9 October 2025 the Cour de cassation (the French supreme court for civil matters) quashed that ruling: the court had to examine whether those sites were compatible with the installation’s classification and the local plan applicable to each. Relocation is not proved with small ads, and the gap in compensation between the two scenarios is considerable.
The facts
A company operates, on land expropriated by the public land agency of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, a regulated business of sorted-waste recovery, wholesale of metal waste and trade in motor vehicles, subject to the classified installations regime. The Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal, on 27 June 2024, fixes the eviction compensation on the basis that the business can be transferred.
The evicted company had argued the opposite, with evidence: its approaches to many estate agents had come to nothing, and the replacement sites put forward by the authority were unsuitable. One was incompatible with the local plan’s constraints on classified installations and no longer available; another lay in a zone prohibiting classified installations subject to a technological risk prevention plan, and was offered only on a 24-month precarious lease; a third required a comprehensive development scheme and was unusable as it stood; the last was not located and sat on farmland. The Court of Appeal had replied that the authority’s proposals “show the contrary” and “are not very far from its current site”. It had also ruled on the sole basis of a submission of 27 October 2023, disregarding a supplementary submission filed on 13 May 2024.
The decision
The third civil chamber quashed the judgment in full (Cass. 3e civ., 9 October 2025, no. 24-18.168), on two grounds.
On procedure, under articles 455 of the Code of Civil Procedure and R. 311-26 of the Code of Expropriation: while the appellant must file submissions within three months of the notice of appeal, “submissions filed after that period may be admissible if they contain only elements in reply to the submissions of the acquiring authority and of the government commissioner”. The Court of Appeal, which neither ruled the supplementary submission inadmissible nor referred to it, and whose reasons do not show that it took it into account, breached those provisions.
On the merits, under article L. 321-1 of the Code of Expropriation: “the indemnities awarded cover the whole of the direct, material and certain loss caused by the expropriation”. To hold the business transferable, the judgment had relied on replacement-site proposals “consisting of estate agents’ listings”. By so ruling, “without examining, as it was asked to, whether the evicted company did not prove that the sites proposed by the agency were unsuitable for its business in view of the legal constraints arising from its ICPE classification and from the local plan applicable to each of those sites, the Court of Appeal did not give a legal basis to its decision”. Remittal to the Nîmes Court of Appeal.
What this changes for valuation
Transfer or closure: two compensations without common measure. If the business can be transferred, eviction compensation covers removal and reinstallation costs, the operating loss during the move, the loss of custom caused by the relocation and the trading disturbance. If it cannot, the expropriation extinguishes the business, and the compensation covers its value, plus redundancies and winding-up costs. For a recycling business the first figure runs to hundreds of thousands of euros, the second to the value of a going concern. The decision recalls that this choice is not made on impressions of proximity.
Proving the replacement site. An agent’s listing proves that land is for rent or sale, not that a classified installation can operate there. That requires reading the local plan’s regulation for the zone, checking whether classified installations are permitted and on what terms, examining easements, technological risk perimeters, access, available area, the length of the occupancy title on offer, and estimating the time needed to obtain the environmental permit. A 24-month precarious lease does not make a replacement site for a business that needs a heavy authorisation.
What the valuer’s report does. It lists the sites proposed by the authority and those sought by the evicted business; for each it documents zoning, the classified installations regime and the other constraints, and concludes on compatibility. It then quantifies both scenarios, or the one that remains: the cost of transfer item by item, or the value of the business established by the usual methods for that type of activity, with its stock, equipment, permits and custom. The expropriation judge expects that concrete demonstration; it is exactly what the quashed judgment lacked.
Pleadings matter too. The second lesson is procedural: a supplementary submission filed in reply after the three-month period is admissible, and the court must deal with it. For an expropriation file, this means that new evidence obtained after the initial submission, agents’ replies, letters from the administration, a private expert’s report, can still be filed in reply, provided it answers the other side’s pleadings.
The role of the government commissioner. In these disputes the government commissioner files his own valuations. The evicted party’s submission answers them point by point; the private valuer assisting that party prepares the answer, starting with the question of transfer, which governs everything else.
What the valuer takes from it
- Whether an expropriated business can be transferred is proved site by site, against the local plan and the classified installations regime; agents’ listings are not enough.
- Transfer and closure call for two different computations: costs and trading disturbance on one side, value of the business on the other.
- The report documents each proposed site, concludes on compatibility, then quantifies the retained scenario item by item.
- A submission in reply filed after the three-month period remains admissible; the court must take it into account.
- The answer to the government commissioner is prepared with the valuer, beginning with the question of transfer.
Further reading
The Compulsory purchase and pre-emption page describes the assignment, its timescale and its fee. The guide My business premises are compulsorily purchased and the glossary entries indemnité de transfert and commissaire du gouvernement complement this article. On the same theme: Compulsory purchase of an unlawful building and Compulsory purchase: three recent rulings. The decision is available on Légifrance.
What next
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