To complain about poor financial investment advice and engage the responsibility of the person who would have recommended it, you should not wait for the loss to be officially recorded.
The time limit for taking legal action, which is the usual time limit of 5 years, begins, according to the Court of Cassation, on the day on which the client knew or should have legitimately known that he was the victim of a bad investment, or even fraudulent. And, she specifies, it is enough that press articles have been published on this subject to judge that the lay investor knew or should have known.
Investment in manuscripts
Justice had been seized by an individual who, like many others, had invested in supposedly valuable manuscripts which were eventually to be resold with a significant capital gain, presented as certain. But some time later, the press echoed the opening of a criminal investigation, the liquidation of the organizing company and indictments for fraud. Later still, when reselling the manuscripts, which in reality were of little value, the investor realized his losses.
Having shortly after asked the judge to condemn the broker who had advised the transaction to compensation for the losses, the investor was told that he had acted too late, the limitation period usual 5 year old coul. It had not been leaked since the resale of the manuscripts which made the losses official, but it had been leaked since the publication of the information which should have alerted him, the judges concluded. However, there is a general principle according to which a limitation period for taking legal action runs from the day on which the victim knew or should have legitimately known that his damage was sufficiently certain.
(Cass. Civ 1, 19.4.2023, R 22-13.925).
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