The Court of Cassation rejected, Wednesday, May 11, the appeals of the former minister Pierre Joxe and the former boss of the Equidia chain Eric Brion, now definitively dismissed from their lawsuits in defamation against the two women, Ariane Fornia and Sandra Muller, who accuse them of sexual violence.
In these two emblematic cases of the #Metoo wave of denunciation of sexual violence, the highest court of the judiciary considered that the court of appeal had been right to consider that the words of the two accusers were based “on a sufficient factual basis” to recognize them “the benefit of good faith”. In its judgments, the Court adds that the offending remarks, which date from October 2017, did contribute to “a debate of general interest on the denunciation of non-consensual sexual behavior of certain men vis-à-vis women”.
The case involving Pierre Joxe began on October 18, 2017, three days after the launch of #Metoo, when Ariane Fornia, daughter of Eric Besson, former minister of Nicolas Sarkozy, published a post in which she claimed to have been victim of sexual assault in his youth by a “former Minister of Mitterrand”.
The other case examined by the Court of Cassation broke out on October 13, 2017, when journalist Sandra Muller launched the hashtag #BalanceTonPorc on her Twitter account, calling on women to denounce those who had harassed them in the workplace. In the process, she opened the ball of accusations by writing in a tweet: “You have big breasts. You are my type of woman. I will make you cum all night. Eric Brion ex-boss of Equidia #BalanceTonPorc”.
At first instance, the court ruled in favor of the two plaintiffs who considered themselves defamed by their accusers, ordering them to pay damages. But the Paris Court of Appeal then overturned these judgments, on March 31 and April 14, 2021, considering that the denunciations fell under freedom of expression. This decision of the Court of Cassation takes the opposite view of the position of the General Advocate of the Court of Cassation, who during the hearing, on April 5, had spoken in favor of the cassation of the two judgments.
While reminding “the importance of fundamental freedom of expression”Blandine Mallet-Bricout called for preserving “a balance (…) between this freedom and the protection of the individual rights of citizens” and to “insist on the necessity” to have“evidence to characterize the likelihood of the facts reported” to benefit from the exception of the “sincerity”.