Given that according to the judgment under attack (Paris, 1 March 2002) Mr. X., a salaried accountant in the employ of the Virydis Co., was conclusively convicted for false accounting, use of false documents and fraud in that he used false pretences in order to obtain grants for the company in respect of qualifying contracts which were falsified, and that the court below ordered him to pay compensatory damages to the parties civiles;

Given that Mr. X. criticises the judgment for so deciding when, according to him, an employee who simply does what his employer requires of him is not liable to third parties, a principle ignored by the court below in rendering him liable to the parties civiles for the loss caused to them by the offence of which he was convicted without inquiring at all, despite the arguments addressed to it, whether these offences were committed solely in the execution of instructions given to him and consequently as part of the job for which he was employed by the company which alone benefited from the offences;
But given that an employee who is convicted of intentionally committing an offence, albeit on the orders of his employer, is liable for the harm thereby caused to third parties, so that the decision of the court below was justified in law.

For these reasons DISMISSES the application for review.

This note on subsequent developments reflects the legal situation as of October 2004.

Assemblee pleniere, 14 December 2001 : This judgment seems a priori to show a slight deviation from the case law following from the judgment of the assemblee pleniere of the 25 February 2000 . However, rather than a reversal, it is more a question of clarification, the solution of the 25 February 2000 not moreover applying to the agent who, acting on the instruction of his principal intentionally made himself guilty of an offence, and not preventing the involvement of the agent who has committed a criminal offence in civil liability towards the victim of this offence.

Translation by Raymond Youngs

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