CA Paris, pôle 5, ch. 4, 14 October 2026, RG No. 25/19561, Subito.it et al. v. Google France et al.
Damages litigation arising from anti-competitive practices has a peculiarity that private international law struggles to capture: the wrongdoing is often single, while the damage is dispersed. A single infringement decision concerns a market spanning several States; the victims are groups each of whose subsidiaries has suffered loss on its own territory; the perpetrators are themselves groups whose companies are spread between Dublin, California and Paris. If each victim sues before the court of the place where it suffered loss and each perpetrator insists on being tried at home, compensation for a single infringement is split into as many lawsuits as there are borders.
The judgment handed down on 14 October 2026 by Chamber 5-4 of the Paris Court of Appeal refuses this fragmentation[1]. Eight Italian, German, Spanish and Dutch companies of the Adevinta-Leboncoin group, which are claiming 705 million euros from Google for losses suffered exclusively outside France, will be able to have their claims heard in Paris. Google France, which the French Competition Authority (Autorité de la concurrence) had not in fact sanctioned, forms, according to the Court, one and the same undertaking with the companies that were sanctioned; its presence in the proceedings brings all the defendants before the French court. The solution rigorously applies the framework that the Court of Justice had laid down six months earlier. It can only be fully understood in the light of the arguments exchanged by the parties, the account of which alone makes it possible to gauge its potential for international competition litigation.
A final decision, and a victim that had contributed to the investigation. In Decision No. 21-D-11 of 7 June 2021, the French Competition Authority fined Google LLC, Google Ireland Ltd and Alphabet Inc. 220 million euros for abusing their dominant position on the European market for ad servers for publishers, in breach of Article 102 TFEU and Article L. 420-2 of the Commercial Code[2].
The French companies of the group served formal notice on Google in April 2023 to pay them €82 million in respect of the French scope alone, and then requested disclosure of the documents in the French Competition Authority’s (Autorité de la concurrence) file that were relevant to quantifying their loss, which Google refused. On 23 August 2024, all the companies of the group brought interim payment proceedings (référé-provision) against Google France, Google Ireland, Google LLC and Alphabet before the President of the Paris Commercial Court (tribunal de commerce), who referred the case for a hearing on the merits through the bridging mechanism of Article 873-1 of the Code of Civil Procedure (code de procédure civile). On 27 October 2025, the Paris Commercial Court (tribunal des activités économiques) split the dispute: having jurisdiction over the French companies, it declined jurisdiction over the eight foreign companies, which it found to lack a sufficient connection with the subject matter of the infringement and directed “to seek redress elsewhere” (à mieux se pourvoir) before the courts of the countries where their losses had been suffered; as regards the French loss, it reopened the proceedings[3]. Those companies appealed and asked the Court of Appeal to determine their claims itself (évocation); the claims were quantified at €705 million on the basis of a report by the consultancy CRA, which puts the loss of the group as a whole at €952 million[4].
Two readings of Article 8(1). The debate focused on Article 8(1) of Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012, known as Brussels I bis, which allows several defendants to be sued “in the courts for the place where any one of them is domiciled, provided the claims are so closely connected that it is expedient to hear and determine them together to avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgments resulting from separate proceedings”.
The appellants presented Google France as a legitimate anchor defendant, on the ground that it forms an economic unit with the sanctioned companies within the meaning of EU case law. They relied on the French subsidiary’s role in their dealings with Google (a local team placed at their disposal, the sales effort made to migrate their ad server to Google’s tools), the Paris judgments that had found it to be genuinely active in actions brought by other victims (“it is not disputed that publisher clients are canvassed by Google France”, noted the judgment in the Equativ case), its services agreement with Google Ireland, the CNIL decisions describing it as acting on behalf of the Irish company, and the blog post published by its general counsel on the very day of the decision.
Google, on the contrary, regarded the joinder of its subsidiary as artificial. No separate claim had been brought against it; the Autorité had not raised any objection against it; the services at issue are designed by Google LLC and contractually attached to Google Ireland; the French subsidiary’s involvement, which was occasional, post-dated the practices; and the courts had moreover cleared Google France on many occasions in disputes concerning the group’s services. In the absence of proof of its joint and several liability, the risk of irreconcilable judgments was not established; since the appellants’ natural court was the Irish court or that of the place of their damage, forum manipulation appeared to be made out[5]. Nor could the forum of the place of the harmful event be retained, since each subsidiary’s damage was located in its own country. The respondents added that no rule allows the claims of a group’s various entities to be consolidated at the group’s head office, the Court of Justice having rejected, in relation to Article 7, a “reverse application” of the concept of undertaking[6], and that the foreseeability of the forum is assessed at the date of the facts, not in the light of the proceedings brought since.
Why the co-defendant forum. The ground chosen by the appellants was no accident. The forum of the place of the harmful event under Article 7(2) offered them little: the Court of Justice locates competition damage on the affected market, looks to the victim’s registered office only in particular circumstances, notably where its purchases were made in several places on that market, and confines the jurisdiction of the court of the place of damage to the loss suffered within its territory[7]. An Italian subsidiary whose advertising revenue had been cut on the Italian market could hardly find in Paris the court for its damage. The co-defendant forum, by contrast, extends to the entire loss, even where suffered abroad[8]. The whole case therefore turned on Google France’s standing as an anchor.
The Court of Justice’s framework. The Court of Appeal first distinguishes between two provisions: Article 8(1) for Google Ireland, domiciled in a Member State; and Article 42, second paragraph, of the Code of Civil Procedure, extended to the international sphere by the Pelassa and Scheffel judgments, for Google LLC and Alphabet, domiciled in the United States, since the Regulation applies only to co-defendants domiciled in the Union[9]. It then sets out the EU case law in order: the CDC judgment for cartel participants established in different States, the Sumal judgment for an action brought against a subsidiary on account of its parent company’s infringement, and the Athenian Brewery judgment for the reverse configuration[10]. The latest development is the judgment of 16 April 2026, given on a reference from the Gerechtshof Amsterdam on the same day as a twin judgment in the Smurfit Kappa case. In the one case, the anchor was a Dutch holding company of the Prysmian group that was not an addressee of the Commission’s decision on the high-voltage cables cartel; in the other, Dutch companies of the Smurfit Kappa group that were not addressees of a decision of the Italian competition authority[11]. The Court of Justice holds that an anchor defendant not named in the infringement decision may found jurisdiction over companies in respect of which there is serious evidence that they belong to the same undertaking as it does; that the foreseeability of the forum is not an autonomous criterion; and that the prospects of success of the claim against the anchor need not be examined, except as evidence of the artificial creation of the conditions for applying the rule. The fact that the damage occurred outside the European Economic Area, suffered in that case by undertakings from the Gulf, does not in itself make the claim manifestly unfounded.
From all this, the Court of Appeal draws a framework. An economic unit presupposes economic, organisational and legal links between the companies and a specific link between the subsidiary’s activity and the subject matter of the infringement; at the jurisdiction stage, it is sufficient that it is “not excluded” that the defendants belong to the same undertaking. The merits of the claim remain outside the debate; there is no autonomous condition that there be no forum manipulation, since the connection requirement excludes it of itself; foreseeability takes concrete form in the criteria of the close connection; and the complexity of competition damages actions justifies concentrating jurisdiction[12]. This last proposition relies in particular on a judgment given under Article 7(2) in the dispute in the Netherlands between two foundations and Apple concerning the Dutch App Store. The borrowing reveals the Court of Appeal’s ambition: in competition matters, the concentration of litigation becomes a value common to the Regulation’s various heads of jurisdiction. Since the two provisions are “substantially convergent” and the concept of undertaking is unitary, there is no reason, the Court adds, to distinguish according to whether the co-defendant is domiciled in a Member State or in a third State.
Google France under the Court’s scrutiny. The application to the facts proceeds by an accumulation of evidence. Google France is 100% owned by Google LLC, itself owned by Alphabet; its articles of association refer to intermediation in the sale of online advertising, that is, the very services sanctioned by the decision; the bids submitted in April 2019 to the Leboncoin group, in the tender for the choice of its ad server that Google won, presented the Paris teams as a “strong local support”; the CNIL, in decisions of 2021 and 2025, had noted that Google France promotes online advertising on behalf of Google Ireland; Google LLC designs the products at issue and sets the strategy, while Google Ireland, the group’s bridgehead in the Union, does not determine its conduct on the market autonomously; and the blog post by its general counsel referred to the sanctioned companies in the first person plural (“we made commitments”, “our tools”, “we worked with the French competition authority”)[13]. The Court infers from this the existence of economic, organisational and legal links, and then of a specific link between Google France’s activity and the infringement: Google France, Google LLC and Alphabet form one and the same undertaking. Moreover, it is “not excluded” that all four defendants were part of it when the action was brought.
Foreseeability and absence of artifice. There remained the close connection between the claims. The Paris forum was foreseeable for the defendants: the decision was issued by the French authority and gave rise to commitments by three of them; other victims had sued them in Paris as early as December 2021, using Google France as the anchor; and Leboncoin had contributed to the investigation and was among the injured publishers cited in the Autorité’s press release. No artifice is made out: Google analyses competition at the level of the European Economic Area, as documents made public in the US trial reveal its European strategy towards the Adevinta group; the decision concerns a market of European dimension; and the claims rest on the same decision, the same wrongful acts, the same causal link and the same types of damage. Finally, consolidation makes it possible to quantify the loss in a single economic report, debated inter partes with Google’s expert[14]. The judgment is reversed; it is not annulled, since criticism of the reasoning, even if manifestly erroneous, opens only the route of reversal on the merits (réformation). The Paris Commercial Court (tribunal des activités économiques) will hear the claims of the eight foreign companies. The request that the Court of Appeal determine the claims itself (évocation) is, however, refused, since the case is not ready for final determination at appeal level while proceedings are continuing before the lower court[15]. The refusal preserves the two-tier system of jurisdiction; it sends the European loss back to the first-instance judges, before whom the claimants’ economic report had already been debated, according to them, with Google’s expert.
Paris among the fora of European litigation. As early as 2003, the English Provimi decision accepted that a subsidiary established in the United Kingdom could serve as an anchor, in respect of all the claimants, without having been personally involved in the practice[16]. Brexit removed London from the Brussels system; Amsterdam took over, as the two references decided on 16 April 2026 attest; Paris now follows in this line. From the English judge in 2003 to the Court of Justice questioned by the Dutch judge, and then to the Paris Court of Appeal, the same rule proceeds from the same principle, the unity of the undertaking, which competition law imposes and private international law takes up.
US parent companies within reach of the French courts. The alignment with Article 42, second paragraph, makes it possible to sue in Paris, alongside its French subsidiary, the parent company established in a third State. Two companies that belong to the same undertaking and are answerable for the same infringement cannot fall under different fora merely because one is registered in Ireland and the other in Delaware. The judgment given against it will circulate throughout the Union under the recognition and enforcement regime of the Brussels I bis Regulation, which applies to judgments given in a Member State whatever the defendant’s domicile[17]. The Paris court thus becomes a means of reaching the decision-making centre of the undertaking that committed the infringement, at least as long as enforcement can be pursued against assets located in the Union.
The anchor is proven with accessible documents. The documents relied on by the Court are, for the most part, ones that a victim can gather by its own means: the subsidiary’s articles of association, commercial offers received, decisions of another administrative authority, a decision given in another field, and the group’s public communications. Most could be gathered even before proceedings were issued. The “not excluded” standard further lightens the burden, provided that the anchor is real and that its activity overlaps with the period of the infringement[18]. Group communications deserve particular attention: a group that presents itself to the public as a single whole will find it hard to plead before the court the plurality of its legal entities.
The judgment of 14 October 2026 confirms that the concept of undertaking, forged to attribute infringements and calculate fines, has become a rule of judicial geography. Competition law had learned to look through the veil of legal personality to identify the party liable for the penalty; private international law is learning in turn to look through that same veil to identify the court competent to award compensation.
It is now for the Paris Commercial Court (tribunal des activités économiques) to decide whether the concentration obtained at the threshold of the proceedings withstands the test of the merits, whether as regards the liability of Google France, the scope of the Autorité’s decision beyond the French market or the law applicable to the foreign losses. The court of the undertaking has become the court of the entire damage; it remains to be seen which law it will apply.
[1] CA Paris, pôle 5, ch. 4, 14 Oct. 2026, No. RG 25/19561, on appeal from T. activités éco. Paris, 27 Oct. 2025, RG No. 2024073114. Paragraphs cited without further indication refer to this judgment.
[2] Aut. conc., Decision No. 21-D-11 of 7 June 2021, as summarised in the judgment (§ 6 to 8).
[3] § 9 to 13.
[4] § 14, 16 and 65; for a press report, J.-M. De Marchi, “Leboncoin obtient que ses 705 millions d’euros de préjudices réclamés hors de France contre Google soient jugés à Paris”, mind Media, 15 Oct. 2026.
[5] § 35 to 40; legal opinion of Professor Idot, cited at § 39.
[6] § 41. The judgment does not specify the decision referred to; the argument appears to refer to CJEU, 4 July 2024, MOL, C-425/22, which denies the parent company the forum of its registered office for the overcharge suffered by its subsidiaries.
[7] CJEU, 5 July 2018, flyLAL-Lithuanian Airlines, C-27/17; CJEU, 15 July 2021, Volvo e.a., C-30/20; ECJ, 7 March 1995, Shevill, C-68/93.
[8] Cass. com., 20 Sept. 2016, No. 14-25.131.
[9] § 42, 43 and 47; Cass. civ. 1re, 19 Oct. 1959, Pelassa; Cass. civ. 1re, 30 Oct. 1962, Scheffel (the judgment writes “Pelissa et Sheffel”); CJEU, 11 April 2013, Sapir e.a., C-645/11.
[10] § 44; CJEU, 21 May 2015, CDC Hydrogen Peroxide, C-352/13; CJEU, 6 Oct. 2021, Sumal, C-882/19; CJEU, 13 Feb. 2025, Athenian Brewery et Heineken, C-393/23. The judgment mistakenly dates Sumal 21 May 2015 and Athenian Brewery sometimes 13 and sometimes 18 February 2025.
[11] § 45; CJEU, 16 April 2026, Electricity & Water Authority of the Government of Bahrain e.a., C-672/23, and Smurfit Kappa Europe e.a., C-673/23, the facts of which are reported from practitioners’ commentaries (Greenberg Traurig, Legal 500, 6 May 2026; National Law Review) and the EAPIL blog (20 April 2026).
[12] § 46; in addition to judgment C-672/23, CJEU, 7 Sept. 2023, Beverage City Polska, C-832/21; CJEU, 2 Dec. 2025, Stichting Right to Consumer Justice et Stichting App Stores Claims, C-34/24.
[13] § 50 to 54.
[14] § 55 to 61.
[15] § 62 to 74 and operative part.
[16] Roche Products Ltd e.a. v Provimi Ltd [2003] EWHC 961.
[17] Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012, Art. 36 et seq.
[18] T. com. Paris, 21 Oct. 2024, No. 2022039370, requiring an anchor defendant genuinely involved in the dispute.
