French Supreme Court Ruling: Art Buyers Need Not Disclose True Value to Sellers

Key facts

• The Cour de cassation ruled on 3 May 2000 that no obligation of information weighed on the buyer of an artwork.
• Édouard Baldus (1813-1889) was selected with Henri Le Secq, Auguste Mestral, Hippolyte Bayard and Gustave Le Gray for the Mission héliographique, documenting 175 historic edifices.
• Mme Boucher sold 50 Baldus photographs in 1986 at 1,000 francs each (about 307 euros today) and 85 more in 1989 for 85,000 francs (23,800 euros).
• M. Clin resold five photographs to the Amis des musées d'Orsay et de l'Orangerie for 205,000 francs (57,430 euros), nine to the musées nationaux for 360,000 francs (100,857 euros), and 50 to Galerie Octant for 2 million francs (560,320 euros).
• The tribunal de grande instance de Versailles rejected Boucher's claim on 14 June 1995; the cour d'appel de Versailles annulled the sale on 5 December 1997, awarding her 1.915 million francs (536,500 euros).
• The criminal case was dismissed because Boucher herself had proposed the photographs to Clin.
• The law of 20 April 2018 added a third paragraph to article 1137 of the civil code: not revealing one's estimate of a contract's value does not constitute fraud.
• The analysis was published by Pierre Noual, avocat à la cour, in Le Journal des Arts no. 683 of 18 September 2026.