By judgment n ° 15/04295 dated April 25, 2017, the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris condemned la Française des Jeux (FdJ) to pay the winnings for the benefit of a bettor. Indeed, the error in the calculation of the odds, for which the FdJ is solely responsible, is an inexcusable error that does not allow the cancellation of sports betting contracts; In addition, the FdJ did not provide proof of the knowledge of the results by the bettor at the time of his bet.
Refusal by the FDJ to pay the winnings following an obvious error on the odds
Between May 2011 and February 2014, Mr. X (hereafter “the bettor”) concluded several hundred online betting contracts with the FdJ on the “Parions web” site.
During this period, the FdJ refused to admit and pay the winnings of 57 bets won by the bettor.
All requests for payment were refused by the FdJ which relied on a manifest error of the quotation and supported the nullity of the contracts. The bettor then assigned the FdJ for the purposes, among other things, of obtaining payment of the winnings drawn from the betting contracts. He felt that the odds errors were inexcusable errors and that the FdJ could not rely on them.
First, the Tribunal refers to the definition of contract by referring to the Civil Code in the version in force at the material time, applicable to the case in this case, as follows:
"the contract is defined as a convention which is formed by the encounter of an offer and an acceptance, coming from parties having the will to bind one to the other [...] there is valid consent given in error, but once validly constituted, the convention takes the place of law to those who made it. "
Under the old Article 1174 of the Civil Code, "any obligation is null when it has been contracted under a potestative condition on the part of the one who is obligated".
The error on the odds is an inexcusable and indifferent error
4 Article 2010-476 of 12 May 2010 relating to the opening of competition and regulation of the online gambling industry, the "bet by side" defines the bet to side as:
"the bet for which the operator offers players, before the start of the sports competitions or during their progress, odds corresponding to its assessment of the probabilities of occurrence of the results of these competitions on which the players bet. The gain is fixed, expressed as a multiplier of the stake and guaranteed to the players by the operator ".
The sports betting contract is therefore a random contract within the meaning of Article 1964 of the Civil Code:
"the random contract is a reciprocal agreement whose effects, in terms of advantages and losses, either for all the parties, or for one or more of them, depend on an uncertain event".
The Court of First Instance therefore held that "the FdJ, whose ability to detect these errors was at least equal, if not greater than that of the [player], does not deny that it had the means to verify the content of its own offers before putting them into effect. line and thus had the material possibility of avoiding errors due to its own haste".
Thus, errors in determining the rating of the bets in question are "entirely attributable to inadequacies in its internal organization and […] easy to avoid with a minimum of care and vigilance". They must "be recognized as inexcusable and indifferent and they cannot be accepted as grounds for the nullity of contracts validly formed by the meeting of the two wills".
The Court of First Instance finally considers that the FJJ's regulation providing for a purely potestative resolutory condition incurs the nullity provided for in Article 1174 of the Civil Code. Indeed, the FdJ kept the possibility of canceling the sports betting contracts in case of manifest error, knowing that "the criteria for putting into play depended on the sole assessment made by the FdJ on its own obvious errors". That is why, "the FdJ could not, under these conditions, take advantage of its own inexcusable errors to call into question the validity of the 42 contracts validly formed by the acceptance of its offers.".
The burden of proof of knowledge of results rests with the FJ
Article 1315 of the Civil Code provides that:
"the person who claims the performance of an obligation must prove it".
The Court of First Instance considers that the FJ "by merely pointing out the abnormally high nature of the amount of the bets made on these 15 occasions, 20 times higher according to her than the usual average bets of the applicant, see by qualifying him as a "bad faith bettor", these statistics and this assessment unverifiable , which proceed from suspicion, in no way establish with certainty that he was unquestionably aware of the results at the time of the 15 disputed bets. It succumbs to the administration of proof of the precise moments of the bets taken by [the player] and of the purposes of the competitions relating thereto, the only elements which could have been of such a nature as to constitute the facts likely to produce the termination of his obligation to pay winnings ".
Moreover, since the burden of proof lies with the betting operator claiming the cancellation of a contract, it is his task to prove the knowledge of the results by the bettor at the time of betting. This proof can be provided by determining the exact time of conclusion of the bet and the schedule of the end of the competition relating to it.
