DIGITAL SYNAPSE EXCHANGE · LAW

The free report, the paid report — and the right of place

French law as a case study

ABSTRACT

A shopkeeper robbed of an apple calls the police, and the public force comes to establish the facts. A buyer standing in front of a seller who is lying to him has no equivalent call to make. Both events fall under the same criminal law; only the evidence is treated differently — socialised for one, privatised for the other. I argue that this is not a gap in French law but a defect in its clock. Attempted deception is already a crime; flagrancy already applies; the administration already holds every investigative power; a national register already exists and already targets inspections; and the very operation I shall propose — an agent on the spot, in front of the vehicle, with the police present — is already lawful and already practised. It has one defect: only the State may trigger it. Restoring the market police the right way round requires no new power and no new corps. It requires a change of clock.

Introduction — What Happened to Me

I had little money. At that price, few vehicles were within reach, so the arbitration was not between a good car and a bad one; it was between doubt and constraint. I saw what I saw on the bodywork — traces of repainting — and I asked. The seller, a trader with premises, a sign, a company registration, answered as sellers answer. To lift the doubt properly I would have had to pay an expert or a commissaire de justice — some two hundred euros, a heavy fraction of the price of a car in that range.¹ I did not pay it. I trusted the seller, for want of an alternative. I bought.

Some months later, during a repair that had nothing to do with any of this, the mechanic told me what the traces meant: the vehicle had been seriously crashed. My information did not come from the law, and it did not come from the market. It came from a third party who owed me nothing, by accident.

Two or three months after that, I went back. The shop was closed. The seller had gone. I filed no complaint — not because I had no rights, but because there was no longer anyone to file it against. All my rights existed: dol, latent defects, the legal guarantee of conformity, deception. Not one of them served, because the debtor had ceased to have an address.

Note what is missing from that story. I never called the public authorities, and I want to be exact about why: not because I did not think of it, but because there is no such call to make. The shopkeeper who is robbed has a number. The buyer standing in front of a false statement, before the money moves, has none. That absence is the subject of this study.

What follows is not a plea for more law. It is the demonstration that no law is missing.

I. The Two Calls

Consider two events on the same street, on the same morning.

A shopkeeper is robbed — an apple from his display. Theft is a crime;² the offence is in progress or freshly committed, so the rules on flagrant délit apply;³ officers attend, photograph, seize, take statements, verify identity. The evidence is gathered by the public force and paid for by the public purse. He is not asked to prove the theft before the State agrees to look at it.

A buyer is being deceived — in front of the thing, before the sale. This too is a crime: French law prohibits any person from deceiving or attempting to deceive a contracting party as to the nature, substantial qualities, quantity, fitness for use or risks of a product,⁴ and punishes it with imprisonment and a fine which may be raised, proportionately to the advantage drawn from the offence, up to a share of annual turnover.⁵ On paper the second offence is the graver of the two. In fact, the second event has no counter. There is a form to fill in afterwards, and a private report to buy.