Mooring rights at the center of a legal standoff
In Port Grimaud, an iconic private lakeside town, owners of houses lining private docks are fighting to have their rights recognized...
A complex dispute mixing private law, public law, and historical contracts.
Analysis. For several years, hundreds of owners in Port Grimaud have been asking the court to recognize that they hold a mooring right, as mentioned in their property deed. A MOORING RIGHT LINKED TO PROPERTY For them, this mooring right is an attribute of their property as imagined by the architect François Spoerry when designing the town.
It would indeed be a real right (attached to their house and not to its occupant) and private, in the same way as a garage or a garden.
The tribunal judiciaire de Draguignan, seized by 480 owners, confirmed its jurisdiction in July 2025, rejecting the State's request to transfer the case to the tribunal administratif. The judge ruled that the dispute fell under private law, relying in particular on Article 544 of the Code civil and case law from the Cour d'appel de Chambéry assessing the existence of a real mooring right, ancillary to a sale contract for co-ownership lots, with regard to property law. The parties will now debate the merits.
THE AMODIATION CONTRACT: A HISTORIC AUTHORIZATION Approved by the commune de Grimaud in the late 2000s, the owners had signed, with it and the former concessionaires managing the body of water, a so-called amodiation contract, authorizing them to moor on the body of water until the end of the historic concessions (2025 for PG1 and PG2, 2028 for PG3). No fee was claimed from the owners and amodiataires insofar as they had participated in financing the construction of the body of water. By buying back the concessions at the end of 2021, the commune considered that these amodiations ended automatically.
It therefore asked owners to sign new annual contracts each year with fees, sometimes increased if the contracts were not signed. Many owners contest this practice. The tribunal administratif de Toulon, seized by numerous owners, could rule on this point by the end of 2025.
A LEGAL ANALYSIS CONFIRMING THE ASL POSITION The main association syndicale managing the site surrounded itself with recognized legal experts. It notably commissioned a legal opinion confirming the position it has defended with its counsel since the buyout of the concessions. According to it, the body of water is an artificial property (resulting from dredging works and not a natural event) which can only fall under the public domain from the day a public entity became its owner.
Until 1984, the date the body of water was transferred to the State, the body of water was thus entirely private, owned by a SCI and then by the ASP PG. It concludes that the owners have always benefited from a mooring right attached to their house, the fact that the body of water was transferred to the State having no impact on the existence of this right, insofar as the mooring of their boat in front of their dock is perfectly compatible with the purpose of the body of water (boat navigation).
TWO COEXISTING REGIMES Contrary to the position of the municipality of Grimaud, the ASLs assert that the two regimes — mooring rights linked to property and occupation of the body of water — are not mutually exclusive. They can coexist, which also allows for solving specific cases, for example when the moored boats exceed 10 meters from the dock, as mentioned in the property deeds.
PUBLIC OR PRIVATE DOMAIN? A CENTRAL QUESTION The counsels of the ASL PG, two authoritative law professors, assert that there is no obvious evidence that the body of water located in front of the private docks, reserved solely for mooring the dock owners' boats, falls under the public domain of the State.
According to them, these parts of the body of water are absolutely not assigned to the public port service. This opens a crucial debate: is the body of water in front of the houses part of the public domain of the State or the private domain?
Upcoming court decisions could provide some answers.
NECESSARY CONCERTATION The heavy burden of ongoing procedures and the complexity of the issues are pushing the commune and the ASLs managing the lakeside town to come together to define a peaceful framework for coexistence. Mediation should take place in the autumn so that ways out of the crisis can be developed under the aegis of a mediator appointed by the president of the tribunal administratif de Toulon. Confident, the ASLs will defend the work of the architect Spoerry and the rights they enjoy with the utmost firmness, hoping that the commune can hear them and understand the specificities of the lakeside town.
This case illustrates the complexity of property law in port areas where the boundaries between public and private are shifting. In Port Grimaud, the debate is far from over, but recent judicial decisions restore hope to owners.
Pierre BEGLIOMINI (text and photos).