Paris Courts Issue Back-to-Back Rulings: Volvic Liable for "Carbon Neutral" Claims, TotalEnergies Ordered to Include Scope 3 in Vigilance Plan

Two Paris Judicial Court decisions issued in the same week represent the sharpest European climate litigation signal of 2026. In the first, the Paris Judicial Court found Volvic liable for "misleading commercial practices" and ordered the company to pay €75,000 in damages and €10,000 in legal costs to a consumer protection association, holding that the claims "carbon neutral" and "100% recycled" were scientifically inaccurate and therefore misleading. In the second, the Paris Judicial Court found TotalEnergies in breach of its duty of vigilance and ordered it to include Scope 3 emissions — specifically those generated by the combustion of products sold to customers — in its risk mapping, with a hearing scheduled for January 21, 2027 at which the court may issue further orders if the measures are deemed insufficient. Together, the two rulings define the current litigation frontier: product-level climate claims must be scientifically defensible and material claims like "carbon neutral" require substantiated scope and verification; and the duty of vigilance extends to Scope 3 emissions as a matter of French law, not merely best practice. For in-house counsel and ESG practice leaders, the TotalEnergies ruling is the more structurally significant: it establishes that a company's vigilance plan — required under France's Loi de Vigilance — must address the downstream emissions generated by the use of its products, not merely upstream supply chain risks.