Keywords
France, Notaries, Liability, Duty to inform, Due diligence, Environment, Nuisance, Trouble de voisinage, Notarial acts
Abstract
The duty to advise on environmental matters is becoming increasingly important for French notaries, because the government is delegating more and more missions of ecological interest to the-min their capacity as public officers. The first aim of this note is to present and assess the duty of notaries to advise on environmental nuisances in connection with the sale or rental of immovables, which is one of the main causes of liability for notaries: this duty was recently revised and incorporated into the Civil Code. Secondly, the duty to advise will be discussed in cases where the properties for sale have been the site of environmentally dangerous industrial activities. Applicable regulations are particularly complex, requiring notaries to carry out multiple technical checks. Notaries also play an important role in drafting clauses that enable the cost of pollution risks to be shared between the parties to such sales.
Repository Citation
Philippe Pierre,
The Liability of French Notaries and the Duty to Advise on Environmental Matters,
16 J. Civ. L. Stud.
(2024)
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/jcls/vol16/iss1/7