The two year period extinguishing actions arising from an insurance contract, unenforceable if the policy fails to recite the grounds that interrupt it.
All actions arising from an insurance contract are time barred after two years under French law, a very short period against ordinary limitation, justified by the need to close files and release reserves. The starting point varies with the nature of the action and is by itself a large share of the litigation: it runs in principle from the event giving rise to the claim, but it is deferred to the day the policyholder learned of the loss where they did not know of it, and to the day of the third party's claim in liability insurance. The counterpart of that brevity is a strict information duty: the policy must recite the grounds that interrupt and suspend the period, and case law sanctions the omission by simply barring the insurer from relying on limitation at all. A special ten year period further protects beneficiaries in cases of bodily injury. The problem solved is indefinite uncertainty over the liability, which no amount of reserving could absorb.
Article L. 114-1 of the French Insurance Code sets the two year period and article R. 112-1 requires the policy to recite the grounds that interrupt it. Since 2005 the second civil chamber of the Court of Cassation has held that an insurer omitting that recital cannot raise limitation against its policyholder, a sanction that settled in one line an information imbalance decades old.
prescription des actions dérivant du contrat d'assurance, délai biennal