David Montagné 7:54 p.m., December 01, 2022
The Court of Cassation has just closed the legal tussle started two years ago between the restaurateurs and the insurance company Axa.
This will ultimately not have to compensate restaurateurs forced to close their doors during the Covid-19 pandemic due to confinement.
The Court of Cassation ruled in favor of the insurance company Axa on Thursday by validating the warranty exclusion clauses signed by catering professionals and imposed by Axa.
Many restaurateurs had taken their insurance company to court, which refused to compensate them for operating losses due to the closure of so-called non-essential businesses decided by the government in March 2020, due to the health crisis.
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The decisions rendered by the high court concerned four establishments in the Bouches-du-Rhône.
The Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal granted their requests.
They had received compensation of between 100,000 euros and 200,000 euros.
A decision that should set a precedent
The Axa company, which had challenged these four decisions, therefore won its case.
His insurance contracts have just been validated.
The Court of Cassation considers that the absence of a definition of the term "epidemic" in the Axa contract has no effect on the exclusion clause, which does not refer to the term "epidemic" but to the administrative closure of at least one another establishment in the same department.
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She also believes that the exclusion clause is limited, therefore valid, because it applies to the epidemic but also to other grounds such as murder, suicide or contagious disease.
A decision which should set a precedent since there are still several hundred files in progress in France, according to Axa that Europe 1 has joined.
In 2021, of the 15,000 customers concerned, 80% had accepted the transaction offered to them by the insurance company.