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The present appellate decision was rendered in a court proceeding initiated by a French couple («epoux [W]», the Claimants) who in 1997 had two buildings (a stable and a warehouse) constructed on their farm by the French construction company V.Q.B. S.a.r.l. For this purpose, the construction company had ordered fibro-cement slabs from the French importer Defrancq France S.A.S., who in turn had bought the slabs from their manufacturer, the Italian company Societa Italiana Lastre S.p.A. (SIL). After the installed fibro-cement slabs had started to show cracks and other signs of deformation, the couple [W] in September 2009 – over eleven years after the slabs' purchase and installation – sued V.Q.B. and Defrancq France in a French Court of First Instance.

The CISG came into play in the proceedings because Defrancq France formally included the manufacturer SIL into the proceedings, applying for the finding that SIL was in turn liable towards it (so-called «appel en garantie»). In this respect, the Court of Appeal Douai applied the CISG to the relationship between the French importer Defrancq France and the Italian manufacturer SIL in accordance with Art. 1(1)(a) CISG. In this context, Defrancq had alleged that their contract had in fact been a domestic contract because it had been concluded via a French agent of SIL. The Court of Appeal rejected this argument as SIL had proven that said agent had only started to work for SIL in 2007, years after the contract's conclusion in 1997. Accordingly, the Court of Appeal held that the agent could not have been a «place of business» of SIL in the sense of Art. 10(a) CISG (paras. 45–48 of the present decision).

With regard to the substance of the «appel en garantie» brought against the Italian CISG seller, the Court of Appeal found (in paras. 49–52 of the decision) that the two-year cut-off period of Art. 39(2) CISG had clearly passed. SIL was therefore no longer liable to Defrancq for any non-conformity of the slabs that may have existed in 1997.