Jeanne Pouchain who, since November 2017, has been declared dead by the justice system in France
A French woman went to court Monday in Lyon to prove to the government that she is actually alive. French bureaucracy is legendary, and it has taken her three years to get to this point, after she was accidentally declared dead.
The Local reported that the ruling turned 58-year-old Pouchain’s life upside-down. After she was officially declared dead, she lost her ID card, driver's license, bank account and health insurance.
The story started when Pouchain was running a cleaning company and dismissed one of her employees in 2000.
That employee took out a case against the cleaning company and a 2004 labor tribunal ordered Pouchain to pay the woman over €14,000 ($17,000). However, the ruling was not enforced because it was against the company and not Pouchain herself.
The employee then tried to sue Pouchain directly in 2009 for unfair dismissal through the French employment tribunal system called Prud'hommes. The employee, who was unavailable for comment, lost her claim.
In 2016, the claim went back to the law courts on appeal and this time, after the judge was told Pouchain was dead, they ordered her husband and son to pay damages on her behalf–Pouchain believes that the former employee fabricated her death to win damages by suing her ‘beneficiaries’.
Jeanne Pouchain
"The complainant affirmed that Mrs. Pouchain was dead, without proof, and everyone believed her. Nobody checked anything," said Pouchain’s lawyer, Sylvain Cormier.
A lawyer for the former employee of Pouchain’s company has countered that Pouchain is responsible for the situation in that she in effect played dead by refusing to respond to correspondence to avoid litigation.
Pouchain is in court to have her death declared fake and denies the lawyer’s accusations. Pouchain told AFP that her life has been in limbo ever since. “State agencies tell me I am no longer dead, but that I am not yet alive. I'm in the making!” she said.
