Yannick Noah was acquitted by the Versailles court. This is the verdict of a case opposing him to a fan who thought he had bought a racket used by the former tennis player during the victorious final of Roland-Garros in 1983, according to the decision consulted Friday by AFP. In 1986, during an auction organized by TF1 for the benefit of the Care France association, Yannick Noah sold a racket, which he says he used during the Roland-Garros final won three years earlier.
A tennis enthusiast, Pierre R., who died in November 2020, bought it for 12,000 francs, or nearly 2,000 euros, on the basis of a handwritten certificate signed by Yannick Noah. But at the end of 2016, the buyer decided to sell it and therefore had it appraised to find out its value. A specialist from the Drouot study told him that this racket from the Coq Sportif brand had never been used by the tennis player during this edition of Roland-Garros.
The man, then his daughter and his wife, therefore seized the court of Versailles for the responsibility of Yannick Noah to be engaged for having produced a false document, and the contractual responsibility of Care France, beneficiary of the auction. They demanded 35,000 euros in damages.
The court of Versailles, which judged this case in February, declared Thursday this action “inadmissible” because “prescribed”, the sale having been carried out 33 years before the referral to the court. “The court accepted our argument. This action, more than 30 years after the sale, was obviously too late. The rest was just fantasy, ”reacted Friday to AFP William Bourdon, the lawyer for the former tennis player.