manquer en fait

08:03 Jul 2, 2020 

Thank you to everybody for all your help with this. All the references and discussion points were really helpful, not only for this term, but also to give an overview of this part of the legal system.

17:35 Jul 1, 2020 

I just re-read Amy's entire text and realized that we all, including myself, got lost in the weeds here with our discussion about whether what the judge did was an error of fact, etc. To get this translation right, we have to look at all 3 instances of "manquer en fait":

"...l'irrecevabilité des moyens de cassation pour manquer en fait au motif que blabla... un moyen manque en fait lorsqu'il fait dire a une décision judiciaire un chose qu'elle n'a pas dite... [l'argument de la demanderesse] ne constitue pas un manque en fait"

It's really simple: "XXX concludes that the appeal cannot be heard due to an error of fact, because the appellant reproached the judge for having blabla... An argument [for appeal] contains an error of fact when it claims that the court decision said something which it did not say... [the appellant's argument] does not constitute an error of fact."

That makes sense because this appellant's argument for appeal isn't an error of fact; it's an error of law (reproaching the judge for not doing X when the judge wasn't supposed to do X = error of law). The difference: https://www.ridoutbarron.com/blog/2016/07/an-error-of-law-ve...

07:03 Jun 30, 2020 

When “facts” are at issue in cassation proceedings, it is usually alleged that the lower court whose judgment is under appeal failed to appraise the facts of the case correctly. In this case, it is clear that the Cour de Cassation is not considering the facts but is appraising the “pleas in cassation” and finding that they are factually incorrect. This is remote from any examination of the facts by the Cour de Cassation.

I would say: the public limited company xxxx further submits that the pleas in cassation are inadmissible on the ground that the appellant in cassation criticised the appeal judge, called on to adjudicate solely on admissibility, for failing to carry out a substantive examination of the dispute;
a plea is factually defective when it purports to say that a judicial decision says something which it did not in fact say;

01:55 Jun 28, 2020 

I think Adrian answers what you just said in his own recent suggestion

"Be that as it may, arguments of fact are a rather specious averment as a Cassation is, as everyone knows, brought on a point of law and not fact up from a lower appeal level.

Also, when you look at the very meticulous reasons that can be used to by the court de Cassation to throw out a case, and the one that concerns us here

Selon la définition qu’en donne l’ouvrage “Droit et pratique de la procédure civile”
( Litec, précité, n° 480), un moyen manque en fait “lorsqu’il contient des énonciations contraires à la réalité des choses, telle qu’elle résulte de la décision attaquée ou des pièces de la procédure”.

"Groundless" is just too vague to reflect the above.

As Adrian says,

Otherwise, scattergun adjectives like groundless and meritless needs to be labelled de facto or de jure.

So nearly all attempts so far use "fact/factual" but referring to the legal procedure as we are in Cassation rather than the initial facts of the case;

21:42 Jun 27, 2020 

The factual record = the facts of a dispute that have been admitted into evidence in the litigation. Say you're suing your neighbor because their tree fell on your garage. There might be 100 facts (exhibits showing where the tree was relative to your garage; photos of your destroyed garage; an estimate of the cost to fix it; etc.). Say 92 of the facts are presented at trial (maybe the other 8 were held inadmissible or your lawyer strategically chose not to use them). "The factual record" is that set of 92 facts.

Side note, "factual record" is also used in legislation: if you're drafting a new law on water pollution, you might want to "develop a factual record" of what chemicals pollute the water and what health problems they cause. To develop it, you might get science articles, testimony from public health experts, etc., and present all that formally in congress/parliament, in order to put it on the record.

Neither of these things is what Amy's text is talking about, and they also don't fit the definition of "manquer en fait" in the cassation context, as PhB provided in his post. It would therefore be confusing to the EN legal reader if you used that term.

19:30 Jun 27, 2020 

Hi,

I think "groundless" is far too general and others are closer by using the word "fact/factual".

In a legal dictionary, I found

"groundless, adj. (Of a legal claim or argument) lacking reason or validity ( groundless cause of action). See FRIVOLOUS."

However, after a lot of research, I did find on many American sites this time

"Counsel should not misrepresent, mischaracterize, misquote, or miscite the FACTUAL record or legal authorities" [my bold]

I think this may be what the French term and some of you are trying to get at when you say "fact/factual"

Does this help?

14:26 Jun 27, 2020 

Country is Luxembourg; I should have put this, sorry. All these explanations are really helpful, thank you.

13:35 Jun 27, 2020 

Would be useful. Thank you. If France, be also careful, when looking for references, not to mix up French tribunaux administratifs and France's Conseil d'État, on the one hand, and French cours de cassation. They use identical terms but the meanings may be different as they do not belong to the same ordre judiciaire. Stranger things have happened, so I would check whether the meanings are the same.

13:02 Jun 27, 2020 

An explanation from Belgium: Moyen qui manque en droit... Moyen qui manque en fait. Manque en fait le moyen de cassation qui repose sur une lecture inexacte ou sur une interprétation inexacte de la décision attaquée. Lorsqu’elle est utilisée par la Cour de cassation, cette formule exclut donc toute solution donnée à un quelconque problème de droit; d’ailleurs, les arrêts de la Cour de cassation qui contiennent pareille réponse à un moyen de cassation ne sont généralement pas publiés à l’initiative de la Cour de cassation ou de son parquet. https://justice.belgium.be/fr/ordre_judiciaire/cours_et_trib... Example: Dans la mesure où , en cette branche, le moyen invoque la violation de la foi due à l’avis de rectification, il manque en fait. Arrêt de la Cour de cassation de Belgique here: http://jure.juridat.just.fgov.be/pdfapp/download_blob?idpdf=... An example from France: Qu'ainsi, le moyen, qui manque en fait, ne peut être admis ; https://juricaf.org/arret/FRANCE-COURDECASSATION-20191016-18...