Sale of a Mobile Home: When Fraudulent Concealment Voids the Contract
A Case of Fraudulent Concealment
Picture the scene: a sunny campsite in Perpignan, palm trees swaying, holidaymakers wandering around in flip-flops… and right in the middle of it all, mobile home C204, about to spark a full-blown legal battle. Suffice it to say that when Company J came to see me, they weren’t looking for a lawyer—they were looking for a firefighter to put out the blaze this sale had ignited.
At our firm, mobile home cases are a bit like a good thriller: you never know what you’re going to uncover, but there’s always a twist before the end. And in this case, the twist was deception.
Company J, which specialises in tourist accommodation and short-term holiday lets, purchased a mobile home from Mrs DJ on 13 April 2024. The sale included pitch C204 at Camping ENSO for €18,000, together with an annual pitch fee of €3,203 payable to H Vacances, the campsite operator.
On the face of it, the transaction was entirely straightforward: there was a certificate of sale, an invoice clearly stating “Mobile Home, Pitch C204”, a clear plan to let the property to holidaymakers, and even a schedule of nightly rental rates for the 2024 season supplied by the seller.
In short, everyone seemed happy. Company J believed it had bought a mobile home that could be let as holiday accommodation, the seller had received the purchase price, and H Vacances had collected the annual pitch fee. The scene was set, the cast was in place, and the script appeared to have been written.
Except… before long, one of the characters decided to rewrite their part.
On 16 April 2024, Company J asked H Vacances to renew the contract for pitch C204 in its name and paid the annual fee of €3,203. It was exactly what any purchaser would do to secure the operation of its mobile home.
But, contrary to all expectations, H Vacances replied that the purchase of the mobile home was “impossible” for the 2024 season, claiming that Mrs DJ had “sold it unlawfully” and had failed to comply with the conditions governing the validity of the sale and the transfer of the pitch contract, including the prohibition on subletting.
Legal Translation: The campsite operator’s position was that the sale contract did not comply with the rules, that subletting the mobile home would be prohibited, and that Company J would only be allowed to remain on the campsite in order to remove the mobile home.
In other words, you bought a mobile home to let it to holidaymakers, only to be told that the only thing you could do was come and collect it… so you could take it away.
That was, of course, entirely incompatible with Company J’s business model.
The result? The annual pitch fee was refunded, Company J was unable to operate the mobile home, and its business activities were brought to a standstill.
Entirely understandably, Company J felt it had been deceived.
That was the point at which the case landed on my desk.
Our Approach
As always, we began by trying to resolve the matter amicably. A formal recorded-delivery letter, dated 22 May and received on 10 June, set out the issue clearly and calmly for Mrs DJ.
The point was straightforward: she had sold a mobile home together with the use of pitch C204, knowing that the purchaser intended to let it as seasonal holiday accommodation, while concealing fundamental contractual terms.
The seller’s response? A well-rehearsed argument, but one built on shaky legal ground.
She did not dispute the key facts: the sale, the purchase price, the payment, or Company J’s intention to sublet the mobile home. Instead, she argued that the inability to perform the contract was entirely the fault of H Vacances, which, she claimed, had wrongfully refused to renew the contract for pitch C204 in Company J’s name.
She portrayed herself as nothing more than a retired woman with no specialist knowledge of mobile homes, explaining that she had sold her only mobile home because she was moving to Martinique and managing it from a distance had simply become too complicated.
According to her account, she was fully entitled to sell her mobile home directly under the campsite’s “Freedom Formula”, which, she said, allowed direct sales until 31 May each year. She also argued that Company J was acting in bad faith because it understood that the contract for the rental of pitch C204 was separate from the sale of the mobile home.
In short, she maintained that she had concealed nothing and that the campsite was entirely to blame.
At this stage, the case might appear unclear to an outside observer. But at our firm, we are used to unravelling this kind of arrangement. And the deeper we looked into this case, the clearer the deception became.
Company J had made its intentions perfectly clear to the seller: it was purchasing the mobile home for seasonal subletting. Far from questioning that plan, Mrs DJ endorsed it by sending the nightly rental rates for the 2024 season. In doing so, she effectively confirmed that seasonal subletting was possible, without disclosing the contractual restrictions affecting the pitch.
Not only did the purchasers ask specific questions about the rental of pitch C204 (“Could we have a document confirming that, as part of the sale, we will be able to obtain the pitch rental agreement in our name? Our accountants are rather particular… How does the process work?”), but the seller responded with a level of confidence that, from a legal standpoint, carries significant consequences.
She explained that the pitch rental agreement would be renewed in their name, that all they needed to do was pay the €3,300 pitch fee, that they had “all the information” in pages 1, 2, 3 and 4, and that, should any problem arise—something she said she would be “very surprised by” she would reimburse them.
On the face of it, this may have seemed a sensible precaution, but it was wholly insufficient to negate a fraudulent concealment.
Fraudulent Concealment?
The nub of the problem? The copy of the pitch rental agreement that had supposedly been provided contained only pages 1, 2, 3 and 40. Company J later discovered that Article 10, on page 14, prohibited subletting.
In other words, the very information that was crucial to the purchaser—the ability to sublet the mobile home—was negated by a clause contained within the pitch rental agreement, a clause that the seller had failed to draw to Company J’s attention despite its repeated requests.
To cap it all, Mrs DJ expressly advised Company J’s directors not to contact the manager of H Vacances directly until the rental of the pitch had been authorised in their name, assuring them that she would inform them first.
In practical terms, this had the effect of preventing the purchaser from accessing the primary source of the information: the pitch rental agreement and its exact terms.
From a legal perspective, we therefore have a consistent body of evidence:
– the seller knew that Company J intended to sublet the mobile home;
– she gave every appearance of confirming that this would be possible;
– she provided an incomplete copy of the pitch rental agreement;
– she failed to disclose a crucial contractual restriction (the prohibition on subletting); and
– she controlled communications with the campsite operator to prevent that restriction from being discovered.
In practical legal terms, this is known as fraudulent concealment (réticence dolosive): the deliberate withholding of information that is decisive to the other party’s decision to contract, while allowing that party to believe everything is consistent with its intended purpose.
We therefore brought proceedings against Mrs DJ and ENSO, seeking:
– the annulment (nullity) or rescission of the sale dated 13 April 2024;
– repayment of the purchase price of €18,000;
– the return of the keys; and
– an order that the defendants be held jointly and severally liable for €22,897 in respect of lost rental income and €10,000 in compensation for non-material damage.
Our Arguments
Our case was built around three main arguments:
Fraudulent concealment (réticence dolosive) by the seller, arising from her failure to disclose the essential terms of the pitch rental agreement, in particular the prohibition on subletting, even though the ability to sublet was the decisive reason for the purchase.
Mistake as to the essential qualities of the property sold. Legally, a mobile home is not simply a physical asset. It is inseparably linked to its pitch, and the ability to operate that pitch through subletting is an essential quality where the mobile home is intended to be used for tourist accommodation.
The impossibility of achieving the contract’s intended purpose, which was fully known to the seller. She knew that, given the terms of the pitch rental agreement, Company J’s business model could not be realised under the conditions that she nevertheless led it to believe had already been secured.
The Conclusion
In response, Mrs DJ’s defence amounted to little more than an attempt to shift responsibility. According to her, everything was the fault of the “third party”, H Vacances, which had allegedly failed to honour its own obligations. She relied on her lack of specialist knowledge, her age, her move to Martinique and the fact that she owned only a single mobile home as mitigating circumstances. But a lack of specialist knowledge does not relieve a seller of the duty to disclose material information when selling a property subject to significant contractual constraints.
For a firm experienced in cases involving defects in consent, this is a classic example. Our opponents advanced arguments that were sufficiently well developed to give rise to legitimate doubt… a doubt we systematically dismantled by demonstrating the coherence of the fraudulent concealment and the central importance of the subletting project to the formation of Company J’s consent.
The issues at stake extend far beyond simply recovering the purchase price. They concern the legal certainty of mobile home sales in the context of tourist accommodation, where pitch rental agreements, their schedules, and their subletting or restrictive clauses are often more significant than the mobile home itself.
If this article sometimes reads like a story, it is because every case has one: its characters, its unspoken facts, its incomplete documents and its hidden clauses. Our role is to step into that story, unravel it, and ensure that the ending is brought back into line with the law. And in this field, let’s just say we are not in the habit of letting deception—or hidden clauses—have the final word.
Whether the case concerns a mobile home or another matter, when the contractual reality no longer matches the promises made to our clients, we know where to look, what to prove and how to turn a sense of helplessness into a robust legal strategy.
It may be less dramatic than a television series, but for our clients, the outcome is every bit as important.
