CEDH · CASELAW;CLIN;ENG — 14 juin 2007

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France - 71111/01 Judgment 14.6.2007 [Section I] Article 10 Article 10-1 Freedom of expression Order requiring a magazine to issue a statement explaining that a photograph of a murdered prefect had been published without the family's consent: no violation   Facts : A few days after the murder of a French Prefect, the weekly magazine Paris-Match published an article   entitled   “ La République assassinée ” (The Murdered Republic). A two-page colour photograph taken moments after the murder showed the Prefect's lifeless body lying on the ground in a pool of blood, facing the camera. To defend their right to private life the Prefect's widow and children sought injunctions, inter alia against the applicant company, which published Paris-Match , to have the copies of the magazine in which the photo appeared seized and to enforce the prohibition of their sale by means of coercive fines. The urgent applications judge acknowledged that the publication had trespassed on the family's private life. Considering that the requested seizure order would be difficult to enforce in practice, he preferred to issue an injunction requiring the applicant company to publish a statement at its own expense in the following issue of Paris-Match , under the heading “Court injunction”, informing readers that the photograph had been judged deeply distressing for the victim's widow and her children. The Court of Appeal upheld the decision, considering that publication of the photograph, while Prefect Erignac's close family were still mourning his loss, and given the fact that they had not given their consent, constituted a gross disturbance of their grief, and accordingly of the intimacy of their private life. It added that publication of a statement was legally justified under Article   9 § 2 of the Civil Code when its purpose was to cause the intrusion into the intimacy of the family's private life   to cease. The Court of Appeal modified the content of the statement accordingly and combined it with a coercive fine. The statement the applicant company was required to publish in its magazine and finally did publish was to inform readers that the photograph had been published without the consent of the Erignac family, who considered its publication an intrusion into the intimacy of their private life. The Court of Cassation dismissed an appeal on points of law by the applicant company. Law : The obligation to publish a statement amounted to interference under Article   10 and the interference was “prescribed by law”. Article   9 of the Civil Code gave judges the precisely circumscribed power to prevent or cause to cease an intrusion into the intimacy of private life. Although all the measures they could take under that Article were not listed expressly and exhaustively, they were not unknown to the publishing profession.   There was established case-law which sanctioned the impugned measure and satisfied the conditions of accessibility and foreseeability. The interference had also pursued a legitimate aim – to protect the rights of others. As to whether the interference had been “necessary in a democratic society”, the Court took into account first of all the duties and responsibilities inherent in the exercise of freedom of expression. For example, the death of a close relative and the ensuing mourning must sometimes lead the authorities to take the necessary measures to ensure respect for the private and family lives of the persons concerned. In the present case, the photograph had been published in Paris-Match only 13 days after the murder and ten days after the funeral. The distress of the victim's close relatives should have led journalists to exercise prudence and caution, given that he had died in violent circumstances which were traumatic for his family, who had expressly opposed publication of the photograph. The result of publication, in a magazine with a very high circulation, had been to heighten the trauma felt by the victim's close relatives, so they were justified in arguing that there had been an infringement of their right to respect for their private life. The Court then examined to what extent the punishment might have a dissuasive effect on exercise of freedom of the press. The French courts had refused to order the seizure of the offending publications. The wording of the statement, which was different from the text in the first-instance proceedings, revealed the care the French courts had taken to respect the editorial freedom of Paris-Match , which was characterised in particular by the policy of illustrating stories with hard-hitting photographs. That being so, of all the sanctions permitted, the order to publish the statement was that which, both in principle and as regards its content, least restricted the exercise of the applicant company's rights. The applicant company had not shown in what way the order to publish the statement had actually had a dissuasive effect on the way the magazine had exercised and continued to exercise its right to freedom of expression. Conclusion : no violation (five votes to two).   © Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court. Click here for the Case-Law Information Notes