Seller's duty to inform: a competent professional buyer is not entitled to it, regardless of their area of expertise

Seller's duty to inform: a competent professional buyer is not entitled to it, regardless of their area of expertise.

A company that has been operating a quarry for 14 years purchases a new crawler excavator from an industrial equipment dealer.

It subsequently complains of numerous malfunctions and sues the seller for rescission of the sale, citing a breach of the duty to inform and advise.

Its argument: it operates quarries, not equipment sales - since the specialties are different, the seller should have provided better advice.

Dismissed.

The Court of Cassation clarifies: the seller's duty to inform is not owed to a professional buyer if the latter possesses the skills to assess the exact scope of the technical characteristics of the equipment sold; it does not matter that they practice a different specialty than the seller.

In this case, the buyer had been using mechanical excavators daily for 14 years and already owned one. They were therefore perfectly familiar with this type of equipment, even if they did not sell it.

The question is not "Are you in the same business as the seller?", but "do you know enough about the product you are buying?".