Is the vacation rental platform Abritel just a simple “content host” not responsible for what it publishes, as it proclaims? To this question, the Paris Court of Justice answered in the negative on February 21 (2023). He sentenced the company HomeAway UK, operator of Abritel, until December 31, 2020, to compensate sixty individual victims of scams, by paying them 107,078.79 euros (and to reimburse their legal fees).
These individuals had been tricked by scammers who placed bogus ads on the platform and then pocketed the rental money. When they asked Abritel to compensate them, they were refused. The platform maintained that it is only a “content host”, and that it cannot be held responsible for what is published there. She also argued that the victims had shown “recklessness”, by exchanging by email with the false owners, and by making the payments outside the secure internal messaging system.
On December 23, 2020, these users, grouped within a collective represented by Me Jonathan Bellaiche, subpoenaed HomeAway UK. They disputed that it could present itself as a simple host. The court followed them: it judges that the company HomeAway UK “cannot claim to have exercised, in the operation of the Abritel.fr platform, the role of a purely passive host, the consequence of which would have been limited civil liability”. He therefore considers that a “common law contractual liability” must apply.
He recognizes, however, that users who have exchanged outside the secure messaging system have been reckless: he only reimburses them at 40%, unlike those who have reserved on the site, and who are compensated at 100%. %. ” This decision, which recognizes the civil liability of the HomeAway platform, is a reassuring legal victory for victims of scam “says M.e Bellaiche, who still has three other actions pending against Abritel. The American company Expedia, which took over Abritel, said “ to study » the ability to appeal.