On 8 July 2020, the Paris Court of appeal ("the Court") annulled dawn raids conducted by the French Competition Authority ("the FCA") at Whirlpool's premises in 2014.
| what you need to know - key takeaways |
- When a dawn raid is conducted on the basis of documents seized by the FCA during previous dawn raids, the list of these documents must be attached to the order authorising the subsequent dawn raids in order to ensure effective remedy against the order.
- The FCA may not ground a request to conduct dawn raids on the basis of evidence gathered during a previous dawn raid if this dawn raid has been annulled by a court.
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On 27 and 28 May 2014, the FCA raided Whirlpool's premises to find evidence of an alleged price-fixing cartel in the domestic appliance sector. These investigations were conducted by the FCA following the discovery of initial evidence during previous dawn raids conducted on the premises of Samsung and Fagor Brandt. Whirlpool subsequently challenged the validity of these raids before national courts.
After the Court first rejected its claims in 2017, the French Supreme Court overturned the judgment and sent the case back to the Court. In this judgment dated 8 July 2020, the Court reversed its previous judgment and annulled the dawn raids, ruling the following:
- First, that the list of documents seized during the previous raid was not attached to the order authorising the dawn raid, which resulted in Whirlpool being deprived of its right to an effective remedy against the order.
- Second, that the raid on Samsung's premises had already been annulled by the Supreme Court in 2017 because of the violation of its rights to defence (Samsung had been deprived of its right to contact its lawyers until the investigators placed seals in its premises – see our summary here). The FCA was therefore not authorized to use evidence gathered during this previous raid to support its request for an authorization to carry out consecutive dawn raids. According to the Court, the circumstance that the court order was not solely based on this evidence is not relevant, as it still constitutes one of the main grounds of the order.
As a consequence, the Court annulled dawn raids on Whirlpool's premises, preventing the FCA from keeping the seized documents or a copy.
With thanks to Alexandre Marescaux of Ashurst for his contribution.
