On 27 November 2025 the third civil chamber of the Cour de cassation ruled on a New Caledonian construction project. Société Le Nickel had engaged a maître d'œuvre to bring its fire defence system into compliance; part of the work was subcontracted, and the civil engineering lot went to a group of two companies. The system failed its commissioning tests. The Nouméa Court of Appeal ordered several of those involved, including one member of the group, to pay the cost of the remedial works.
That member appealed. Its argument rested on a single clause: the group agreement provided that its members were not jointly liable to one another. On its reading, it therefore had no obligation to make good the whole of the loss.
What the Court holds
The non-solidarity clause stipulated in a group agreement between contractors is no bar to one member of the group being held liable in solidum, together with other participants who are not members of it, on account of its own personal faults, where those faults have inseparably contributed, with the faults of those other participants, to the whole of the employer's loss.
The reasoning turns on what the clause governs, and what it does not. A group agreement organises relations between its members. It does not bind the employer, who is not a party to it, and it says nothing about relations between a member of the group and those involved from outside it — here the maître d'œuvre and its subcontractor.
Liability in solidum does not arise from any stipulated solidarity. It arises from each party's personal fault, where those faults have contributed inseparably to the same loss. What a member of the group owes the employer is therefore measured not by its share in the group, but by its fault.
The precise scope
The judgment is inédit: it is not reported in the bulletin. On this point the Court dismisses the ground of appeal — it does not quash. This is a confirmation, not a reversal, and it should be read as what it is: an established rule applied to a group agreement.
What is quashed lies elsewhere
The partial quashing concerns quite different ground: the amount. One member of the group had entered into a settlement with another party, and the Court of Appeal failed to consider whether that agreement had given rise to a payment reducing the recoverable loss by the same measure. Compensation is full, and no more than full: neither loss nor profit for the victim.
For a company sued alongside others, the two points read together. The non-solidarity clause is no shield; what has already been settled by another participant, on the other hand, comes off the total.
A judgment from here
The case is New Caledonian throughout. It comes from the commercial division of the Nouméa Court of Appeal, it is decided under, among others, article 16 of the New Caledonian code de procédure civile, and it returns to the Nouméa Court of Appeal, differently constituted, for the amount to be reconsidered.
One question this judgment does not settle: the solution applies to a private contract, before the ordinary courts. The joint group is also the usual form of bid for public contracts, where disputes fall to the administrative courts and their own rules on solidarity. Nothing here tells us how matters stand on that side.
Cour de cassation, 3e chambre civile, 27 November 2025, no. 23-21.410, inédit — text of the judgment.