Your French office forwards you a thick document covered in stamps. A commissaire de justice — the licensed process server the French called a huissier de justice until 2022 — has served your company with an assignation, the writ that opens a lawsuit in France. You are in London, New York or Dubai, the hearing is in Paris, Nanterre or Bobigny, and the paperwork gives you a deadline measured in days. Panic is understandable. Doing nothing is the one option you do not have: a French court can rule against your company even if nobody shows up, and that judgment can then be enforced against your French bank account while you are still deciding what to do. The good news is that French procedure gives a foreign owner real weapons — extra time for distance, strict formal requirements the claimant must meet, procedural defences that can stop a case before the merits, and a full right of appeal. This guide walks you through the document in your hands, the exact deadlines that apply to a defendant based abroad, and the defence playbook your French avocat (attorney) will deploy, so you can handle a French lawsuit from abroad without flying to Paris for every hearing.

Statutory references in this article are quoted in the version in force on 12 September 2026. French court practice uses French terms throughout; each one is explained the first time it appears.

I. Your French company has been served: what the assignation says and how fast you must move

A. How to read the assignation the day it arrives

An assignation is not a judgment and it is not a negotiation letter. It is the formal act by which the claimant summons your company before a named court on a named date, and it sets the boundaries of the entire case: what the claimant asks for, on which legal grounds, and with which exhibits. French law lists what it must contain, and the list is long precisely so that a defendant served out of the blue can understand the case. Under Article 56 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and I quote, “L’assignation contient à peine de nullité, outre les mentions prescrites pour les actes d’huissier de justice et celles énoncées à l’article 54 : 1° Les lieu, jour et heure de l’audience à laquelle l’affaire sera appelée ; 2° Un exposé des moyens en fait et en droit ; 3° La liste des pièces sur lesquelles la demande est fondée dans un bordereau qui lui est annexé ; 4° L’indication des modalités de comparution devant la juridiction et la précision que, faute pour le défendeur de comparaître, il s’expose à ce qu’un jugement soit rendu contre lui sur les seuls éléments fournis par son adversaire.”

Read those four items as your intake checklist. First, the court and the date: the heading tells you whether you are summoned before the tribunal judiciaire (the general civil court) or the tribunal de commerce (the commercial court). That distinction matters because the two courts do not play by the same representation rules, and because a claimant who picks the wrong court hands you your first line of defence, as explained in Part II. Commercial disputes between traders, disputes about commercial companies and disputes about commercial acts belong to the commercial court: Article L.721-3 of the Commercial Code provides, and I quote, “Les tribunaux de commerce connaissent : 1° Des contestations relatives aux engagements entre commerçants, entre artisans, entre établissements de crédit, entre sociétés de financement ou entre eux ; 2° De celles relatives aux sociétés commerciales ; 3° De celles relatives aux actes de commerce entre toutes personnes.” If your French subsidiary, typically a SAS (a simplified joint-stock company, the flexible vehicle most foreign founders choose) or a SARL (a limited-liability company with a more rigid frame), is sued by a supplier over unpaid invoices, the commercial court is normally the right forum. If a former employee sues, the case belongs to the labour court instead, and an assignation sent to the wrong court is vulnerable from day one.

Second, the claims and the legal reasoning: the writ must set out the facts and the legal arguments, not just a bare demand for money. A vague writ that says your company owes 80,000 euros without explaining which contract, which invoices and which clause is not a solid writ. Third, the exhibit list (bordereau de pièces): the claimant must attach a numbered list of the documents the claim relies on. Compare the list with what you actually received. Missing exhibits are a practical gift: your lawyer can demand them, and gaps in the claimant’s file often reveal a case built on shaky paperwork. Fourth, the how-to-appear section: it warns you that failing to appear exposes you to judgment on the claimant’s evidence alone, and, where representation by an avocat is compulsory, it must also contain two extra items. Under Article 752 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and I quote, “Lorsque la représentation par avocat est obligatoire, outre les mentions prescrites aux articles 54 et 56 , l’assignation contient à peine de nullité : 1° La constitution de l’avocat du demandeur ; 2° Le délai dans lequel le défendeur est tenu de constituer avocat.” Every one of these mandatory mentions is sanctioned by nullity, which means a defective writ can be thrown out — but only if your side raises the defect properly, as Part II explains.

Two practical points before you call your lawyer. Check where the writ was delivered. Service on a company is normally made at its siège social (registered office) as shown on the Kbis, the official registration certificate issued by the greffe (the clerk’s office of the commercial court). If your company moved offices and never updated its registration, the writ may have gone to the old address and been served to whoever was there — that does not make it disappear, but it affects how the court treats your absence. And note the date the court clerk (greffe) stamped the case: since the recent reforms, the hearing date is communicated by the greffe to the claimant on presentation of the draft writ, under Article 751 of the Code of Civil Procedure, so the timetable is court-driven from the start. Photograph or scan every page, keep the envelope with its postmark, and send the whole file to your French counsel the same day. The clock is already running.

B. Your real deadlines when you live abroad

The writ tells you to appoint an avocat within a short deadline — in the standard written procedure before the tribunal judiciaire, the official public-service guidance tells a served defendant to instruct a lawyer within 15 days, as the service-public.fr page on the course of a civil trial confirms. Treat that fortnight as your hard operating deadline even if your company is managed from abroad: everything else in your defence depends on having counsel constituted (constitution d’avocat) in time, because only your avocat can file pleadings, receive the opponent’s exhibits and speak to the court on your behalf. Before the tribunal judiciaire, representation is not optional. Under Article 760 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and I quote, “Les parties sont, sauf disposition contraire, tenues de constituer avocat devant le tribunal judiciaire. La constitution de l’avocat emporte élection de domicile.” That last sentence is practical gold for a foreign owner: once your lawyer is appointed, your company’s legal address for the whole case becomes your lawyer’s office, and nothing important will be sent to an empty mailbox again. Before the commercial court, by contrast, the parties may appear in person or through any authorised representative, which is one reason commercial cases are often cheaper to defend — but the procedural traps there are just as sharp, so keep a lawyer in both forums.

Living outside France then buys you extra time on top of every procedural deadline. This is the délai de distance, the distance extension, and it is automatic: you do not have to ask the judge for it. Under Article 643 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and I quote, “Lorsque la demande est portée devant une juridiction qui a son siège en France métropolitaine, les délais de comparution, d’appel, d’opposition, de tierce opposition dans l’hypothèse prévue à l’article 586 alinéa 3, de recours en révision et de pourvoi en cassation sont augmentés de : 1. Un mois pour les personnes qui demeurent en Guadeloupe, en Guyane, à la Martinique, à La Réunion, à Mayotte, à Saint-Barthélemy, à Saint-Martin, à Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, en Polynésie française, dans les îles Wallis et Futuna, en Nouvelle-Calédonie et dans les Terres australes et antarctiques françaises ; 2. Deux mois pour celles qui demeurent à l’étranger.” In plain terms: if you live abroad, your time limits for appearing, appealing, and petitioning the Court of Cassation are all extended by two full months. A one-month appeal deadline becomes three months for a foreign-based party. The Court of Cassation applies this rule strictly in favour of parties outside France: in a ruling of 10 October 2018 (Civ. 1re, pourvoi n° 17-14.401, ECLI:FR:CCASS:2018:C100616), it held, and I quote, “à l’égard des parties domiciliées à l’étranger, le délai de pourvoi de deux mois augmenté de deux mois court du jour de la remise régulièrement faite au parquet et non de la date de la remise aux intéressés d’une copie de l’acte par les autorités étrangères”. Two lessons in one sentence: the distance extension is real, and the clock for a party abroad starts from the formal handover of the document to the French public prosecutor’s office (parquet), not from the day the foreign authorities physically hand you the copy.

That reference to the parquet reveals how service abroad actually works, and why you should check it. When the defendant usually resides abroad, the process server does not simply post the writ overseas. Under Article 684 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and I quote, “L’acte destiné à être notifié à une personne ayant sa résidence habituelle à l’étranger est remis au parquet, sauf dans les cas où un règlement européen ou un traité international autorise l’huissier de justice ou le greffe à transmettre directement cet acte à son destinataire ou à une autorité compétente de l’Etat de destination.” In practice, inside the European Union the writ usually travels through the EU Service Regulation directly to the competent authority of your country, and outside the EU through the 1965 Hague Service Convention or diplomatic channels — and each of these routes leaves a paper trail your lawyer can audit. If the trail is broken, the claimant has a problem, not you: where it is not established that the recipient learned of the document in good time, the court cannot rule on the merits unless three cumulative conditions are met — proper transmission channel, at least six months elapsed since dispatch, and no proof of delivery despite steps taken with the foreign authorities. That triple lock is Article 688 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which states, and I quote, “S’il n’est pas établi que le destinataire d’un acte en a eu connaissance en temps utile, le juge saisi de l’affaire ne peut statuer au fond que si les conditions ci-après sont réunies : 1° L’acte a été transmis selon les modes prévus par les règlement européen ou les traités internationaux applicables ou, à défaut de ceux-ci, selon les prescriptions des articles 684 à 687 ; 2° Un délai d’au moins six mois s’est écoulé depuis l’envoi de l’acte ; 3° Aucun justificatif de remise de l’acte n’a pu être obtenu nonobstant les démarches effectuées auprès des autorités compétentes de l’Etat où l’acte doit être remis.”

There is one important exception to that protection, and a foreign owner must know it: urgent interim relief. The same Article 688 ends with the sentence, and I quote, “Toutefois, le juge peut ordonner immédiatement les mesures provisoires ou conservatoires nécessaires à la sauvegarde des droits du demandeur.” The Court of Cassation confirmed the point on 10 July 2025 (Civ. 2e, pourvois n° 23-11.006 et 23-11.748, ECLI:FR:CCASS:2025:C200693), quashing an appeal ruling in a case where defendants living in Switzerland had been summoned at very short notice: an interim judge hearing a request for a protective measure — there, the appointment of an administrator — may, and I quote again, “ordonner immédiatement les mesures provisoires ou conservatoires nécessaires à la sauvegarde des droits du demandeur”, even without proof that the writ reached the person abroad. Translation for your case: if the claimant only wants money at the end of a full trial, defective service abroad can paralyse the case for months. But if the claimant asks the emergency judge (juge des référés) to freeze your account, appoint an expert or stop a delivery today, the judge can act first and check service later. An assignation marked référé d’heure à heure — an emergency summons with hours of notice — must therefore be treated as a fire alarm, whatever country you are in.

Finally, understand what happens if you ignore the writ, because the instinct to file it away is the costliest mistake in this guide. A French court does not drop a case when the defendant stays silent; it judges it. Under Article 472 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and I quote, “Si le défendeur ne comparaît pas, il est néanmoins statué sur le fond. Le juge ne fait droit à la demande que dans la mesure où il l’estime régulière, recevable et bien fondée.” The judge will still check the claim, but on the claimant’s papers alone, with nobody pointing out the inflated invoice, the expired deadline or the missing signature. And the resulting judgment is immediately dangerous: Article 473 provides, and I quote, “Lorsque le défendeur ne comparaît pas, le jugement est rendu par défaut si la décision est en dernier ressort et si la citation n’a pas été délivrée à personne. Le jugement est réputé contradictoire lorsque la décision est susceptible d’appel ou lorsque la citation a été délivrée à la personne du défendeur.” A judgment réputé contradictoire — deemed adversarial — can only be attacked by appeal, not by the simpler remedy of opposition available against a true default judgment. Worse, first-instance judgments are enforceable immediately: under Article 514, and I quote, “Les décisions de première instance sont de droit exécutoires à titre provisoire à moins que la loi ou la décision rendue n’en dispose autrement.” Your opponent can send a commissaire de justice to seize your French bank balance on the basis of a judgment you never defended, while your appeal is still pending. Silence is never a strategy. Now here is the strategy.

II. How a foreign owner defends a French case without flying to Paris

A. Instruct an avocat and attack procedure before merits

Your first instruction is the simplest: put a French avocat on the file within days, give a single contact person in your team, and stop communicating with the claimant directly. Anything you write to the other side from abroad — an angry email admitting part of the debt, a proposal to pay in instalments, a message quibbling over the amount — can end up exhibited against you, translated and read to the court. Your lawyer becomes your voice and your mailbox: before the tribunal judiciaire the appointment is compulsory under Article 760, and the election of domicile at counsel’s office means deadlines and exhibits flow to a professional who diaries them. Choose counsel admitted to practise in France and used to acting for foreign-owned companies: they will know how to take instructions in English, handle documents across time zones, and explain each French step before it happens. If your group already works with a French firm for company secretarial matters — the annual accounts, the Kbis updates, the filings with the greffe — ask them to coordinate, because the litigator will need the company’s corporate documents fast. Practical tip from the publisher’s companion guides: foreign owners who keep their French company’s paperwork in order, from the bank account file to the first hire’s file, defend faster and cheaper, as our pillar guide to setting up and running a French company as a foreign founder explains. Gather now the contract at stake, the full invoice chain, the delivery proofs, the email thread, and the names of the two or three people who know the facts — your lawyer will turn that raw material into conclusions, the written pleadings in which each side’s arguments must appear.

The second instruction surprises many common-law clients: in France, the strongest opening moves are usually procedural, not substantive. French procedure forces the defendant to raise procedural objections first, in a strict order, and rewards those who do. The building blocks are threefold. An exception de procédure asks the court to declare the proceedings irregular or extinguished, or to stay them — wrong court, defective writ, lack of capacity. A fin de non-recevoir asks the court to throw out the claim without examining the merits because the claimant has no right to sue — no standing, no interest, time-barred, already judged. And the two must be played in the right sequence. Under Article 73 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and I quote, “Constitue une exception de procédure tout moyen qui tend soit à faire déclarer la procédure irrégulière ou éteinte, soit à en suspendre le cours.” Under Article 122, and I quote, “Constitue une fin de non-recevoir tout moyen qui tend à faire déclarer l’adversaire irrecevable en sa demande, sans examen au fond, pour défaut de droit d’agir, tel le défaut de qualité, le défaut d’intérêt, la prescription, le délai préfix, la chose jugée.” And the ordering rule, which traps unwary defendants, is Article 74, and I quote: “Les exceptions doivent, à peine d’irrecevabilité, être soulevées simultanément et avant toute défense au fond ou fin de non-recevoir.” Raise your procedural objections together, at the very start, before arguing the merits — argue the invoice is wrong first, and you may lose the right to say the court has no jurisdiction.

Applied to your served company, that framework produces a concrete checklist your lawyer will work through in the first weeks. Was the writ formally valid? Every missing compulsory mention identified in Part I — court, date, factual and legal grounds, exhibit list, appearance warning, counsel’s constitution and your deadline — is a potential nullity, and nullities for formal defects follow a defendant-friendly rule: the claimant’s act stands unless the law expressly provides for nullity or a substantial or public-policy formality was breached, and even then the party invoking nullity must prove the harm the irregularity caused. That is Article 114 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and I quote: “Aucun acte de procédure ne peut être déclaré nul pour vice de forme si la nullité n’en est pas expressément prévue par la loi, sauf en cas d’inobservation d’une formalité substantielle ou d’ordre public. La nullité ne peut être prononcée qu’à charge pour l’adversaire qui l’invoque de prouver le grief que lui cause l’irrégularité, même lorsqu’il s’agit d’une formalité substantielle ou d’ordre public.” So your lawyer will frame each defect with its concrete prejudice: the missing exhibit list deprived you of the ability to prepare, the wrong hearing date made you miss the bus, the absent legal grounds left you guessing what you are accused of. Was the right court seized? An employment dispute sent to the commercial court, a claim covered by a jurisdiction clause sending disputes to London or to arbitration, a defendant with no French establishment sued in a court with no link to the dispute — each is an incompetence objection to be raised in limine litis, at the threshold, before any defence on the merits. Is the claim even receivable? Limitation (prescription) kills many stale supplier claims: five years is the default in commercial matters, and your lawyer will count from the invoice due date, not from when the claimant finally woke up. Lack of standing, lack of interest, a matter already judged (chose jugée) — each ends the case without the court ever deciding who was right.

A Court of Cassation ruling shows how brutally effective a fin de non-recevoir can be when the missing element blocks any conviction on the merits. In a commercial-chamber decision of 28 October 2008 (Com., pourvoi n° 07-16.056, ECLI:FR:CCASS:2008:CO01102), the Court approved judges who had refused to convict company directors pursued for the company’s debts without the mandatory prior step, holding, and I quote, “la convocation du dirigeant de la personne morale, poursuivi en paiement des dettes sociales, pour être entendu personnellement par le tribunal, est un préalable obligatoire aux débats ; que l’omission de cet acte qui fait obstacle à toute condamnation constitue une fin de non-recevoir”. The context was directors’ liability, but the mechanism is exactly what your lawyer hunts for in your file: a missing prerequisite that bars any sentence, whatever the merits. In the standard track before the tribunal judiciaire, these procedural battles are fought before a dedicated case-management judge. Under Article 789 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and I quote, “Le juge de la mise en état est, à compter de sa désignation et, jusqu’à son dessaisissement, seul compétent, à l’exclusion de toute autre formation du tribunal, pour : 1° Statuer sur les exceptions de procédure, les demandes formées en application de l’article 47 et les incidents mettant fin à l’instance”. The juge de la mise en état — the judge who supervises the mise en état, the preparation phase during which lawyers exchange conclusions and exhibits — rules alone on your procedural objections before the case ever reaches a trial panel. Win there, on nullity, incompetence or inadmissibility, and the lawsuit dies in months instead of years, for a fraction of the cost of a full merits fight. That is why the intake checklist in Part I matters: every defect you spot on day one becomes ammunition for day thirty.

B. Settle, defend and keep control of the judgment

Procedural objections are your shield; the merits are the battle itself, and most French business cases are won in the exhibit file long before the hearing. French civil litigation is written litigation: the court decides on the basis of the conclusions exchanged and the numbered exhibits attached to them, with short oral pleadings that summarise rather than replace the papers. Your job as the foreign owner is therefore to feed your lawyer a complete, ordered, honest file — and to do it early, because late exhibits can be discarded and last-minute surprises irritate the bench. Build the file around the claimant’s own story: take each invoice, each delivery note, each email the writ relies on, and match it with your document. The delivery that arrived two weeks late. The email in which the claimant accepted a discount for the defect. The retention-of-title clause nobody noticed. The second contract, signed six months later, that rescheduled the debt the claimant now presents as due. Every French commercial file lives or dies on paper contemporaneous with the events; reconstructions written after the writ arrived carry little weight. If a document is in English, have it translated by a sworn translator (traducteur assermenté) — the court works in French, and your lawyer will tell you which pieces truly need a certified translation and which can be summarised. If key witnesses sit abroad, collect dated written statements (attestations de témoin) in the formal regulatory format now, while memories are fresh, rather than hoping someone will fly to testify in eighteen months.

While the file is being built, keep settlement on the table from day one — not as weakness, but as arithmetic. A full first-instance case before a French court commonly runs twelve to twenty-four months from writ to judgment, plus the appeal if either side challenges, plus enforcement skirmishes. Your costs include your lawyer’s fees, translations, possibly a court-appointed expert, management time across time zones, and the contingent liability sitting in your French subsidiary’s accounts, which your auditor may ask you to provision. Against that, weigh what a negotiated exit costs: a discount on the principal, a payment schedule, a mutual termination of the contract with a confidentiality clause, each formalised in a written settlement (transaction) that ends the dispute with the authority of a final judgment and, crucially, can include the claimant’s waiver of further claims. Settlement talks can run in parallel with the proceedings — the mise en état timetable continues while you negotiate, so you lose nothing — and they can be structured through mediation at any stage, with the judge’s approval if proceedings are already pending. One caution for foreign owners: never pay the claimed amount informally “to make it go away” without a written settlement covering the whole dispute, interest, costs and waiver. An unjustified payment without paperwork is routinely exhibited as an admission that the debt was due, and the claimant then sues for the balance.

If the case goes to judgment, your defence does not end with the ruling — it enters its most technical phase, and this is where foreign owners lose winnable cases by missing deadlines. First, read the judgment for what it orders and what it permits. Because first-instance decisions are provisionally enforceable as of right under Article 514, the claimant can enforce immediately unless the court set that enforcement aside with reasons — which the official guidance confirms the judge may do on its own motion or at a party’s request, as the service-public.fr trial guide explains. If enforcement would cause manifestly excessive consequences — seizure of the operating account that pays your French salaries, forced sale of essential equipment — your avocat can urgently ask the first president of the court of appeal to stay provisional enforcement while the appeal runs. Second, calendar the appeal: one month in contentious matters under Article 538 of the Code of Civil Procedure (“Le délai de recours par une voie ordinaire est d’un mois en matière contentieuse ; il est de quinze jours en matière gracieuse”), extended by the two-month distance period of Article 643 when you are abroad — three months in total for a foreign-based party, counted from proper service of the judgment, with the 2018 Court of Cassation ruling above confirming that service abroad runs from handover to the parquet. The appeal re-examines facts and law fully, so exhibits you omitted at first instance can still be produced, within limits your lawyer will manage. Third, if the judgment was rendered par défaut in the strict sense of Article 473 — last-resort decision served on someone other than you in person — the remedy of opposition sends the case back before the same court that ruled, often faster than an appeal. Fourth, keep parallel risks in view: a claimant who wins may also publish the judgment, claim the Article 700 procedural indemnity the Cassation courts routinely award (3,000 euros in the July 2025 ruling cited above), and pursue your French assets while you appeal. And if your dispute sits inside a wider French compliance picture — a tax inspection running at the same time, for instance — coordinate the two defences rather than letting each lawyer discover the other mid-case; foreign owners facing a simultaneous fiscal front will find the method in our guide to answering a French tax audit from abroad. The through-line is simple: every French judgment tells you, on its last page, which remedies exist and within which time — have your lawyer translate that page the day it arrives, diary every deadline with the distance extension, and decide the next step within a week, not a quarter.

Conclusion

A French assignation served on your company is a summons, not a sentence. Read it the day it arrives against the four mandatory mentions of Article 56, hand it to a French avocat within days so the fifteen-day constitution deadline never becomes an issue, and let the distance extension of Article 643 work for you instead of discovering it too late. Audit how the writ reached you — through the EU Regulation, the Hague Convention or the parquet — because defective service abroad can stall a merits ruling for six months or more, while remembering that an emergency judge can still order protective measures immediately. Strike first on procedure, in the order Article 74 imposes: nullity for formal defects with proven prejudice under Article 114, wrong court, then inadmissibility under Article 122, all before the juge de la mise en état. Build the merits file on contemporaneous paper, keep a documented settlement path open, and if judgment comes, appeal within the extended deadline and seek a stay of provisional enforcement before the seizure hits your account. Run that sequence and you will defend a French lawsuit the way French litigators do — from the file, on time, and from anywhere in the world.

Need a quick opinion on your case.

Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 for a telephone consultation within 48 hours with an attorney of the firm. For a written review of your writ and deadlines, use our contact page and attach the assignation you received.