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PARIS (AP) – Frenchwoman Jeanne Pouchain has an unusual problem. She is officially dead. She has been trying for three years to prove that she is alive.
The 58-year-old woman says she lives in constant fear, not daring to leave her house in the village of Saint Joseph, in the Loire region. Authorities seized her car for an unpaid debt she disputes and which is at the center of her troubles. She fears that family furniture will be next.
Pouchain’s status prevented her and her husband, who is her legal beneficiary with her son, from using their joint bank account. Being declared dead deprived her of other essential amenities.
“I no longer exist,” Pouchain said over the phone. “I’m not doing anything … I sit on the veranda and write. She called the situation “macabre”.
Pouchain’s status as deceased is the result of a 2017 Lyon court decision which found her dead while no death certificate was produced. The decision came after a legal dispute with an employee of the former Pouchain cleaning company, who was seeking compensation after losing his job 20 years ago.
But the initial complaint to the French workers’ court in Prudhomme failed, falling on Pouchain, whose lawyer claims his company was not responsible for the dismissal. A series of legal proceedings, decisions and appeals followed, all the way to the Cour de Cassation, France’s highest court, which dismissed the case as outside its purview, Pouchain and his lawyer said, Sylvain Cormier.
According to Pouchain and his lawyer, a snowballing miscarriage of justice ended with the 2017 Lyon Court of Appeal ruling that Pouchain was not among the living. The legal imbroglio is all the stranger since, according to Pouchain, neither she nor her relatives have received a summons to the hearing.
Pouchain’s husband and son were ordered to pay 14,000 euros ($ 17,000) to the former employee.
Cormier, his lawyer, filed last Monday an unusual request to invalidate the 2017 decision of the Lyon Court of Appeal due to a “serious error” by the judges. He said he had never dealt with such a “crazy” case before.
“At first, I found it hard to believe my client,” he says.
Pouchain says she cannot forgive her ex-employee for her plight but will not identify the woman. The former employee’s lawyer did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Cormier points the finger at the judges and their “extreme reluctance to correct their mistake”.
“When a mistake is so huge, it’s hard to admit,” he said.
Pouchain stubbornly hopes his attorney’s attempt to overturn the judgment will be successful.
“This is my last chance to get my life back,” she said.
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