Hidden Imposed Conditions in Iran's‏ ‏Consumer ‎Law and the Latest Legislative Developments in ‎French Law; Examples‏ ‏and Rulings

Today, the attractiveness of contracts regarding consumer rights is related to their formal aspect. The rules and regulations regarding consumer rights in France have grown in the shadow of two important laws: the old civil law approved in 1804 and the new one approved in 2016. Commercial law and its regulations are constantly evolving. At first, consumer law regulations were only considered as a supplementary source of contract law (Rzepecki, 2015: resume) and gradually its rules became original to the extent that in some cases it became a source of inspiration for other fields (Julien, 2019: Résumé). As will be seen in Iranian law, there are laws such as the Car Consumer Protection Law approved on 1386/23/3, the Consumer Protection Law approved on 8/2/1388, the Electronic Commerce Law approved on 10/17/1382, the Building Presale Law approved on 12/ 10/1389, the country's trade union law approved on 12/24/1382, the country's monetary and banking law approved in 1351 with subsequent amendments, the usury- free banking operation law approved in 1362, the government punishments law approved in 1367 with subsequent amendments. They are considered a turning point in the history of consumer rights in Iran. In the reliminarynegotiations, the consumer was very weak in front of the contractual party,and this caused the stronger party to take the initiative in determining the rights and obligations of the parties, and the text of the predetermined contract containing its desired terms in front of they used to be consumers and behaved like lions and rabbits towards their weak side and drew the line of justice (Kirimi, 2016: 76). Previous articles and researches have focused on the analysis and review of the content of clearly imposed terms to ensure equality between the rights and obligations of the parties and emphasize the need for judges and legislators to intervene in ordinary laws and the constitution to create a contractual balance through the annulment of imposed terms. There is a research gap regarding the secret imposed conditions (Sardoui Nesab and Kazempour, 2013: 75 p. 37; Taghizadeh, 2014: 10 p. 9; Amini, Mansour; 2011, p. 59; Asadi, Passapour, Badini; 2017: 23; Nabizadeh Kabria; 1399: 18; Isaei Tafarshi, Ayin Alireza; 1396: 4; Elahian; 1392: 1). The research question is what is the meaning of hidden imposed conditions and what are their examples in Iran's consumer law and what is the ruling of the legislator regarding this category of conditions? The new approach to the freedom of contracts in consumer law to fight against the content of the imposed contract prompted professionals to change their position and turn to the formal aspects of the contract in such a way that today the appeal of consumer law is flexible to the formal aspect of the contract. In French consumer law, a list of black-and-gray conditions was compiled in 11 cases. In Iran, hidden imposed terms were identified in 6 cases in two ways: inclusion in the text of the contract, such as illegible, small, ambiguous terms, and inclusion outside the text of the contract, such as terms inside the packaging of goods and software products, in the middle and margin of the contract. In France, Article 1171 of the Civil Code approved in 2016, has declared the sentence of imposed conditions to be considered unwritten" as having the effect of invalidity, and at the same stage of the legislation, it specified their sentence and has the advantage of avoiding the high involvement of judges in the form and content of the" contract and as a result, the difference of opinion of the trial courts has been prevented. Considering the emphasis of the present research on the formal aspect of imposed conditions, as explained in the conclusion section of the article a proposal was made to amend Iran’s, Consumer Protection Law.