A publication on the Internet may constitute evidence in the context of a dispute

An employee who has been employed in a business for less than a year is dismissed for incompetence. She decided to challenge her dismissal in court. The Court of Appeal of Versailles responded favorably to his request, finding that his dismissal had no real and serious cause. To assess the amount of harm suffered, the court of appeal relies on an excerpt from the employee's profile published on a professional social network. According to her former employer, the excerpt showed that the employee had returned to work shortly after her dismissal. Considering this admissible evidence, the judges had therefore limited the compensation for the damage suffered to the amount of €10,000. The former employee then decided to go before the Court of Cassation, claiming that the said extract from the online publication had been distorted by the appellate judges. Indeed, she had not found a job but had only taken steps to take over a company.

The Court of Cassation found that the Court of Appeal had indeed distorted the words "clear and precise" in the excerpt from that profile on which it had based its decision. On the one hand, the Court recognizes the admissibility of such a document as evidence. On the other hand, the Court considers that the employee had simply "carried out a study and made steps to take over a company" and had not found a new job. Consequently, it refers the case back to the Versailles Court of Appeal for a new ruling on the amount of damages to be awarded to the former employee.