A French court on Tuesday struck down a ruling that had ordered state rail operator SNCF to pay compensation to the family of a Jewish man transported to a transit camp in Nazi-occupied France.

Judges in an administrative appeals court in the southwestern city of Bordeaux ruled the administrative courts were not competent to rule on SNCF's legal liability in the case.

The appeal, which overturned a landmark verdict in June last year, could affect hundreds of other potential lawsuits against SNCF by victims of wartime deportations or their families.

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A court last year ordered the SNCF and the French government to pay 61,000 euros to the family of Georges Lipietz, a Polish-born Jew arrested by French police and taken by train to a transit camp near Paris in 1944.

Some 76,000 Jews were arrested in France during World War II and transported in appalling conditions in railway boxcars to concentration camps such as Auschwitz, where most died.

The SNCF, which has received 1,800 requests for compensation since the ruling, said it had been forced to obey the orders of the government of the time.