A farm lease had ended and the tenants’ eviction had been ordered, but, according to the landlords, farming carried on in the buildings and on the land. The court-appointed expert calculated the occupation indemnity (indemnité d’occupation) up to 4 May 2021, and the Court of Appeal adopted that calculation. On 14 December 2023, the Third Civil Chamber of the Cour de cassation (the French supreme court for civil and commercial matters) quashed that decision: the indemnity owed by a person staying on in the premises without right rests on article 1240 of the French Civil Code, and the court must specify the date on which the premises were vacated. The end date of the calculation becomes a question in its own right.
The facts
By a deed of 11 July 1970, a married couple who owned the property, and whose rights later passed to the current landlords, granted a farm lease (bail à ferme) to a married couple, the tenants, over a house, farm buildings and plots of land, made available to a limited-liability farming company (EARL, exploitation agricole à responsabilité limitée). On 15 October 2013, the landlords gave notice to quit on grounds of age (congé pour cause d’âge). A ruling of 4 May 2017, which became final, dismissed the tenants’ application for leave to assign the lease to their son and ordered their eviction.
On 19 October 2018, the EARL and the tenants applied to the agricultural lease tribunal (tribunal paritaire des baux ruraux) for recognition of a farm lease in favour of the company. The landlords counterclaimed for an occupation indemnity.
According to the appeal, the court-appointed expert calculated the indemnity for the house, the buildings and the land from 4 May 2017 to 4 May 2021 by multiplying the annual rental value by the number of years: €4,140.76 a year for the farm buildings. On 3 February 2022, the Rennes Court of Appeal endorsed the report and limited the indemnity owed by the EARL to €16,563 for the farm buildings and €13,358 for the land, the EARL’s total liability under that head being, according to the appeal, €44,129.
The landlords appealed: in their view, the indemnity is owed until the buildings and the land are actually handed back; yet the tenants did not dispute that they had not returned them, and on 1 July 2021 the enforcement judge (juge de l’exécution) of the Rennes court (tribunal judiciaire) had granted the EARL a period of grace until 30 June 2022.
The decision
The Cour de cassation dismissed, without giving reasons, the first and second grounds and the first three limbs of the third, as clearly unable to lead to quashing (article 1014, paragraph 2, of the Code of Civil Procedure). It held admissible the fourth limb of the third ground, which concerned the duration of the indemnity and which the tenants and the EARL said was new: the landlords, “who asked that the sum awarded as occupation indemnity be topped up as at the date of actual vacating of the premises, argued that the farm buildings and the land had not been vacated” (translated from the French).
Under article 1240 of the Civil Code, it held: “It follows from this text that an occupation indemnity is owed by reason of the quasi-delictual fault committed by a person who remains in the premises without a right to do so.” A quasi-delictual fault is a fault committed outside any contract: here, staying on without right. Yet, to limit the indemnity, “the judgment endorses the expert report, which stopped the calculation of these sums at 4 May 2021”. Hence the censure: “In so deciding, without specifying the date on which the tenants had vacated the premises, the Court of Appeal failed to give a legal basis for its decision on this point.” In other words, the Court of Appeal had not established the date of vacating, on which the rule depended.
The quashing is partial (Cass. 3e civ., 14 December 2023, appeal no. 22-14.419, unreported): it covers only the sums of €16,563 and €13,358, and the case was sent back on that point to the Caen Court of Appeal. Having quashed on that limb, the Court did not rule on the remaining complaint. Nor did it set the date of departure itself, or rule on the rental value or the expert’s method.
What this changes for valuation
An indemnity that compensates a fault. Grounded in a quasi-delictual fault, the indemnity owed by an occupier with no right to stay compensates the loss that staying on causes the owner: it is not in the nature of a rent and does not extend the lease, which has ended.
The end date of a calculation is not a date of departure. The expert necessarily stops the calculation at a date, which remains provisional while the occupier is still there. So that the indemnity can run up to whatever vacating date the court sets, the report gives, besides the total for the period, an annual and a monthly value for each component, and states that its end date is that of the calculation, not of departure. The monthly figure then allows the sum to be completed up to departure without redoing the valuation.
Departure must be proved, the starting point justified. Vacating is a fact, established by dated documents: eviction report, handover of keys, exit inventory, bailiff’s report (constat de commissaire de justice), actual repossession of the land. The expert does not decide that question, which is for the court, but lists the documents received and flags those missing. The report also justifies the starting point: according to the appeal, the expert started from 4 May 2017, the date of the ruling ordering eviction, a point on which the Court did not rule.
Telling the regimes apart. A commercial tenant staying on pending eviction compensation (indemnité d’éviction) owes the indemnity of article L. 145-28 of the French Commercial Code, set by reference to rental value without the rent cap (the tenant holding over); once time-barred in the claim for eviction compensation, the tenant becomes an occupier with no right or title (the time-barred tenant). Between joint owners, article 815-9 of the Civil Code grounds an indemnity owed until partition or until the property is actually returned (the occupying joint owner): a different text, the same logic for the end date. The rent surcharge in State-agreement social housing follows other rules (the social housing rent surcharge).
What the valuer takes from it
- The indemnity owed by a person staying on in the premises without right rests on the quasi-delictual fault of article 1240 of the Civil Code; grounded in this way, it is not in the nature of a rent.
- Its end point is the vacating of the premises: the court must specify that date, and the end date of an expert’s calculation does not replace it.
- The report gives an annual and a monthly value for each component, so that the indemnity can be completed up to actual departure.
- The applicable regime, occupier with no right to stay, commercial tenant holding over or joint owner, is identified before any calculation.
Further reading
The Property loss of value page describes the assignment and its fee. The guide How to challenge the court-appointed expert’s report in France and the glossary entries indemnité d’occupation, valeur locative and préjudice immobilier complement this article. The 2025 ruling on the rent surcharge is discussed separately: French social housing rent surcharge: ELAN Act and the 30% cap. On the same theme: Concealed foundation works: sale annulled, use to be paid for and Public domain land sold: void sale, property tax compensated. The decision is available on Légifrance.
What next
Someone is staying in your property with no right to be there?
I quantify the occupation indemnity from the rental value of the premises, component by component, with an annual and a monthly figure that allows it to run until actual departure. The report can be used by the claimant as well as the defendant.
Free quote, by email or by phone. No commitment before the quote is accepted. Fees are never linked to the value of the property (Charte de l’expertise, Title I, §2.1).
