Victory for Valérie Trierweiler. The journalist and former companion of former President François Hollande, dismissed by the Lagardère group in 2020, saw her former employer condemned for having fired her “without real and serious cause”, according to a judgment of the industrial tribunal of Paris. The Lagardère Media News company must pay him a total of 141,000 euros, according to this judgment dated April 25 and first revealed by the Mediapart information site.
This sanctions both a dismissal “without real and serious cause” and the “vexatious conditions of the break”. On the other hand, the industrial tribunal did not accept one of the arguments of Valérie Trierweiler, who believed that she had been dismissed because of a “hate” of François Hollande by his predecessor at the Élysée, Nicolas Sarkozy, Member of the Supervisory Board of Lagardère. “If the disagreement between the two former presidents of the Republic is public knowledge, (…) no concrete proof is provided by (the journalist) on the existence of such maneuvers”, concludes the judgment.
Maximum damages ceiling for Trierweiler
The journalist, 57, was fired in July 2020 from Paris Match, where she worked almost her entire career. The reason invoked was “the inadequacy and the qualitative insufficiency of the proposals for articles presented to the editorial management of Paris Match”, is it recalled in the judgment. But “the employer, who now considers these articles insufficient, however published them without making the slightest remark”, underlines the industrial tribunal.
In addition, the latter recalls that Paris Match “opened its archives” in 2019 to the journalist for her book “We give ourselves news”, in which she compiled some of her articles. “A few months from invoking an alleged professional inadequacy, the employer was thus fully satisfied with the work provided by the employee”, judged the industrial tribunal. However, he did not retain the fact that Valérie Trierweiler was dismissed because of her age, for lack of proof of a desire to “rejuvenate” the writing of Paris Match.
By granting him the maximum ceiling for damages, the industrial tribunal recognized that this dismissal constituted a “collapse of his career”, declared his lawyer, Me Rachel Spire. However, he did not “go to the end of the reasoning”, she estimated: “From the moment when we say that there is no valid reason for dismissing her, why are we dismissing her? Asked by AFP, the management of Lagardère News did not wish to comment or specify whether it would appeal.