In a judgment, the Paris Court of Appeal held that the public institution had failed to protect the health of its employee.
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After seven years of judicial proceedings, Ilma Choffel de Witte and his daughter Saskia were heard by justice: the Court of Appeal of Paris recognized, Friday, November 19, the “inexcusable fault” of the post by breach of his legal obligation to protect the health of one of his senior executives, Nicolas Chofel, the husband of M me Chofel, which led him to commit suicide at his home on 25 February 2013, at 51 years old.
An act that health insurance had already recognized as an accident at work. “It’s a very beautiful victory,” says Sylvie Topaloff, Ilma Choffel’s lawyer and his daughter. What I think is frightening, it was necessary all those years of combat. “La Poste, says Marc Bellanger, his lawyer, “takes note of this judgment” and “will examine in detail the decision and the possibility of appeal in cassation”. In 2018, the complainants had been dismissed by the Paris Court of Appeal. The Court of Cassation broke the judgment in 2019, referring the parties to the Court of Appeal composed of other magistrates.
In law, the inexcusable fault is accepted when it has been shown that the employer had or should have been aware of the danger of the working conditions of an employee for his physical and / or psychic health and that he did not take the necessary and sufficient measures to preserve it. It allows an increase in the rent of the holders right.
Strongly increased workload
Nicolas Choftel ended his days when he was in sick leave for Burn-Out, after discomfort in the Postal Post Office, on January 30, 2013. During this judgment and until his death, he had continued to work on several files, receiving e-mails and SMS as well as telephone calls “sometimes several times in the day, had identified the labor inspectorate in its investigation that followed the death of his employee. La Poste, for his part, explained that these calls were intended to inquire about his health.
In its judgment, the Court of Appeal rolls the path of this superior framework entered the post in 2001 and very well noted. In 2012, in a context of reorganizing the Directorate of Digital Activities and the Internal Media in which Mr. Choflf worked, his workload has increased significantly. The phenomenon accelerated the last six months, pleaded M me Chofel and her daughter. As he was framing until then a person, in February 2012, he oversees five.
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